US Airstrikes Killed Hundreds of Yemen Civilians

Hundreds of civilians were killed or wounded by U.S. airstrikes in Yemen last year, but the Pentagon has yet to publicly acknowledge the casualties or share a full account with Congress, according to documents reviewed by NBC News and people with knowledge of the attacks.

The revelation centers on three strikes conducted in April 2025 during Operation Rough Rider, a 53-day military campaign launched by President Donald Trump less than three months into his second term. Two people with knowledge of the strikes say roughly 150 civilians were likely killed in the first two attacks and approximately 200 more were wounded. The death toll from a third strike on a private residence remains unclear.

The Three Strikes Under Scrutiny

The Pentagon’s own assessments, detailed in a March 2026 letter from Assistant Secretary for Special Operations and Low Intensity Conflict Derrick Anderson to Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), concluded that three attacks in April 2025 “more likely than not” resulted in civilian casualties. Fifteen additional incidents remain under active review.

The strikes in question targeted a private residence on April 6, the Ras Isa port in Hodeidah on April 17, and the Ayn Wadi Barracks Warehouses—a migrant detention center in Sa’ada—on April 28.

The Ras Isa port strike was among the deadliest. Human Rights Watch called the attack an apparent war crime, documenting that it killed 80 civilians and severely damaged critical port infrastructure through which about 70 percent of Yemen’s commercial imports and 80 percent of its humanitarian assistance passes. The independent research group AirWars documented 84 civilians killed and 150 to 171 injured in the strike.

“The US government’s decision to strike Ras Issa Port, a critical entry point for aid in Yemen, while hundreds of workers were present demonstrates a callous disregard for civilians’ lives,” said Niku Jafarnia, Yemen and Bahrain researcher at Human Rights Watch.

The Migrant Detention Center Strike

Less than two weeks later, a U.S. strike hit the Sa’ada Remand Detention Prison, a facility holding African migrants. AirWars recorded 68 civilians killed in the attack. The Houthi-run Ministry of Interior stated that 115 African migrant detainees were held at the facility, of whom 68 were killed and 47 injured.

Amnesty International’s in-depth investigation, based on interviews with 15 survivors and analysis of satellite imagery, concluded that the strike amounted to an indiscriminate attack that must be investigated as a war crime. The organization found no evidence that the migrant detention center was a military objective, noting that its civilian nature was widely known and that it had been visited by humanitarian organizations.

“The harrowing testimonies from survivors paint a clear picture of a civilian building, packed with detainees, being bombed without distinction,” said Kristine Beckerle, Amnesty International’s Deputy Regional Director for the Middle East and North Africa. “This was a lethal failure by the US to comply with one of its core obligations under international humanitarian law: to do everything feasible to verify whether the object attacked was a military objective.”

Survivors described waking to explosions and being prevented by prison guards from fleeing before the second strike hit. One 20-year-old survivor, identified only as Hagos, lost his leg in the attack. “You just wish you were dead there,” he told Amnesty International. “I am begging for some money from friends to get the treatment and pills.”

BBC News reported that the Houthi-run interior ministry condemned what it called the “deliberate bombing” of the facility and said it constituted a “war crime.” The chairman of the Somali community in Yemen, Ibrahim Cabdulqaadir Macallin, told the BBC the scene was “tragic and horrific,” adding: “I saw burnt people. We couldn’t recognise some of the bodies we saw.”

A Campaign of Unprecedented Civilian Harm

The civilian toll from Operation Rough Rider was staggering. According to AirWars, at least 224 civilians were killed during the eight-week campaign—nearly doubling the civilian casualty toll in Yemen by U.S. actions since 2002. Over the previous 23 years, AirWars had tracked at least 258 civilians allegedly killed by U.S. actions in Yemen.

The two deadliest incidents of the campaign—the Ras Isa port and Sa’ada detention center strikes—were also the two deadliest civilian harm incidents publicly recorded in the history of U.S. military operations in Yemen.

Human Rights Watch noted that the strikes were part of over 800 attacks the U.S. carried out in Yemen between March 15 and late April 2025, and that the airstrikes appeared to have caused extensive civilian harm, likely killing and injuring hundreds of civilians.

Pentagon’s Failure to Acknowledge

The Pentagon’s response has drawn sharp criticism from rights groups and lawmakers. In June 2025, Undersecretary for Policy Elbridge Colby wrote to Warren saying the Pentagon had not assessed that civilian casualties resulted from U.S. operations in Yemen since March 15, 2025—a position contradicted by the Pentagon’s own March 2026 acknowledgment.

A Pentagon official told NBC News there was “nothing to announce at the moment,” adding: “In the coming months, the Department will submit its annual report regarding casualties resulting from United States military operations during the 2025 calendar year.”

Amanda Klasing, Amnesty International USA’s national director for government relations, was blunt in her assessment. “The Trump administration’s response has been abysmal,” she said. “The Pentagon has made no public progress in addressing the airstrike on the Yemeni migrant detention center that killed dozens of civilians, much less taken steps to stop it from happening again. Instead, this administration has gutted the Pentagon’s programs meant to prevent civilian harm and has evaded any public accounting for cases of civilian harm.”

An inspector general investigation found that the Pentagon under Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth slashed funding and cut staff for civilian harm mitigation efforts.

Congressional Pressure and the Road Ahead

The 2027 National Defense Authorization Act requires the Pentagon to release unredacted civilian harm investigations and all supporting documents for the three strikes in Yemen. Failure to comply allows Congress to withhold some funds, including travel money for Hegseth.

Warren, who has repeatedly pressed the Pentagon for information, has emerged as a key figure demanding accountability. The March 2026 letter from Anderson to Warren marked the first time the Pentagon formally acknowledged that the strikes likely caused civilian casualties.

The revelations raise fundamental questions about the conduct of U.S. military operations in Yemen and the human cost of a campaign that the Trump administration has yet to fully account for. As Congress considers the NDAA enforcement mechanisms and rights groups continue to press for investigations, the families of the civilians killed and wounded in these strikes await answers that have been more than a year in coming.

For now, the Pentagon’s annual report on 2025 casualties—expected in the coming months—will be closely watched as the first potential public acknowledgment of what documents and sources say was a devastating human toll.