U.S. forces last year killed 153 civilians and wounded nearly 250 others in three attacks targeting suspected militants in Yemen, a Pentagon review found, marking the Trump administration’s first public acknowledgment since taking office that the military caused significant harm to noncombatants in any conflict.
The Pentagon said in its review, a copy of which was seen by The Washington Post, that the three U.S. attacks in April 2025 “more likely than not” harmed civilians and that 15 other incidents in Yemen remain under evaluation. The assessment is contained in an annual report required by Congress.
The review focuses on incidents that occurred in 2025. It does not address claims of civilian harm arising from the U.S.-Israeli war on Iran.
The Pentagon declined to comment on the review’s findings, saying that it would release the report publicly “in the coming months.”
President Donald Trump authorized the Yemen campaign soon after his return to the White House, as pro-Iran Houthi fighters, protesting Israel’s war in the Gaza Strip, staged repeated attacks on commercial shipping vessels in the Red Sea.
Lasting roughly 50 days, it was the first major U.S. military operation following Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s dismantling of a Pentagon office focused on mitigating civilian harm. U.S. forces attacked at least 1,000 targets in that time, according to Pentagon figures, in a bid to diminish the Houthis’ arsenal and restore freedom of navigation to the waters off Yemen.
Hegseth’s stated focus on “lethality” in military missions has been criticized by human rights groups and some lawmakers, who say it runs afoul of America’s obligation under the law of war to reduce risk to civilians whenever possible.
Two of the attacks spotlighted in the Pentagon’s review rank among the highest single death tolls from U.S. strikes since 2001, rights advocates said.
One attack, on April 28, 2025, killed 68 civilians in northwestern Yemen, according to the Pentagon’s review. An investigation by The Washington Post last year verified at least 38 dead after U.S. forces struck a purported detention center where African migrants were being held.
On April 17, 2025, a U.S. attack on the Ras Isa Port in western Yemen killed 80 people and injured 171 others, according to the Pentagon’s review.
An attack April 6, 2025, killed five people in Sanaa, Yemen’s capital, the review says. A separate letter that the Pentagon provided to Congress said the casualties stemming from that incident occurred at a residence.
The Pentagon’s civilian-harm review notes that U.S. officials determined none of the three cases merited condolence payments to the survivors of those killed, a decision some rights experts described as premature.
Human rights groups have described the attacks as potential war crimes. It is unclear if any U.S. personnel have faced disciplinary action as a result.
A spokesman for U.S. Central Command, which oversaw the Yemen campaign, did not respond to a request for comment.
Some details of the Pentagon’s review were first reported by NBC News.
Trump’s predecessor, President Joe Biden, also directed military action in Yemen during the last two years of his administration, following the initial escalation of Houthi attacks on commercial shipping in response to the Gaza war. Under Biden, the Pentagon expanded efforts to reduce civilian casualties caused by U.S. and partner forces after several high-profile incidents, including a botched airstrike in Afghanistan during his administration that killed seven children.
Airwars, a nongovernmental organization that tracks claims of civilian harm, has said that at least 224 civilians were killed as a result of U.S. operations in Yemen between March and May 2025. A total of 258 civilians were killed in all previous U.S. campaigns there, dating to 2002, according to the group’s records.
Emily Tripp, Airwars’ executive director, questioned the Trump administration’s commitment to accounting for claims of civilian harm, saying the 15 unresolved investigations stemming from last year’s operations in Yemen suggest that it is unlikely the U.S. military will thoroughly scrutinize its actions this year.
“How are they going to keep up with the scale and pace of war we have seen in Iran? They chose to hit 13,000 targets in Iran in 40 days — that’s 10 times more than in the Yemen campaign,” Tripp said.
The number of civilian-harm investigators is a sliver of what it was at the beginning of 2025, with cuts overseen by Hegseth shedding more than 90 percent of the office’s staff.
The Pentagon’s report to Congress assessed that there were no incidents in which civilian casualties resulted from U.S. military operations in the Western Hemisphere, where the Trump administration’s campaign against suspected drug traffickers has left at least 221 people dead.
Sarah Harrison, a nonresident fellow at Stimson Center and former Pentagon attorney, called the assertion “an extension of the distortion of reality coming from the White House.”
“Trump has fabricated a war with cartels so he can use the military to target them,” she said, but “the standard for war here is not met.”
Harrison and other human rights experts have said the attacks amount to extrajudicial killings of suspected criminals, rather than lawful attacks on combatants. The Pentagon has rejected that claim.
The report does include new information about U.S. strikes that occurred in previous years.
One 2018 attack in Iraq, which mistakenly killed Iraqi police officers, also killed eight civilians and injured 14 others, according to the review says. To reach that determination, Defense Department officials made a rare site visit and conducted witness interviews, the report says.
“The families in these cases … will finally get some closure,” said Joanna Naples-Mitchell, an attorney who pursued accountability on behalf of the victims and their survivors. “While thousands of civilian deaths and injuries remain unacknowledged,” she added, “each case matters.”
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