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Because that's the only logical alternative? If this were truly the mission it claimed to be, they would capture and interrogate them obviously.

I mean, it would be better. The other option is to take them out of water. There is no universe where the only option to deal with shipwrecked people is to kill them.

In a war situation, which this was not, this is a war crime.

Or do what they did in subsequent murder attempts when there were survivors: pick them up alive and return them from whence they came.