The Pentagon told Congress this week that the U.S. military’s airstrikes against Houthi militants in Yemen last year resulted in 153 civilians killed and another 243 individuals injured in the Middle Eastern nation.
Following Houthi attacks on commercial shipping in the Red Sea early last year, President Trump authorized airstrikes against the rebels in March in an operation dubbed “Operation Rough Rider.”
Three operations during that stretch “more likely than not” resulted in civilian harm, the Pentagon assessed in its 12-page report that was sent to the Senate Armed Services Committee (SASC), which was obtained by The Hill.
The Pentagon dispatched the report to SASC on Monday, a congressional aide told The Hill on Tuesday.
The first instance occurred on April 6 last year at a residence in Sanaa, Yemen, where five civilians were killed and another 25 were injured in U.S. air strikes.
The second attack took place on April 17 that year at the Ras Isa port in Yemen, ending with 80 civilians killed and 171 injured. Human Rights Watch said in June last year the attack should be investigated as a war crime.
The U.S. military airstrikes against Houthis on April 28, 2025 in the vicinity of Saada, Yemen resulted in 47 civilians killed and 68 injured.
Amnesty International’s investigation from October last year into the migrant detention center said the attack killed and injured “dozens” of African migrants, adding that “many” of the migrants were held by Houthis “solely for their irregular immigration status” and the incident should be probed as a war crime.
“This was a lethal failure by the US to comply with one of its core obligations under international humanitarian law,” Kristine Beckerle, the deputy regional director for the Middle East and North Africa at Amnesty International, said at the time.
There are 15 incidents related to the Houthi airstrikes that are under review by the department, the Pentagon said in the report, which was signed by Colby Jenkins, the Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Irregular Warfare and Counterterrorism (IWCT).
The Yemen Data Project, a not-for-profit project, said the U.S. military carried out 339 strikes during Operation Rough Rider, which ended in early May last year, and that “at least” 238 civilians were killed, including 24 children. 467 civilians were injured.
The Pentagon said in the report the U.S. military is “steadfastly committed to limiting harm to civilians, and DoW has a strong record of compliance with the law of war.”
“As a matter of policy, U.S. forces routinely conduct operations under policy standards that are more protective of civilians than required by the law of war and we are committed to continuing to improve our approach,” the department said.
A Pentagon official told The Hill on Tuesday that in the “coming months,” the department will submit its annual report regarding casualties from U.S. military operations during the 2025 calendar year.
“We have nothing to preview or announce at the moment,” the official said.
The Pentagon is required to provide Congress with an annual report on civilian casualties in connection with U.S. military operations, as stipulated in Section 1057 of the 2018 National Defense Authorization Act.
The report comes as the staffing at the Pentagon’s office in charge of reducing civilian harm during U.S. military operations has been cut down.
The staffing at the department’s Civilian Protection Center of Excellence (CPCE) went from 40 civilian, military and contractor support employees to nine full-time employees, seven civilians and two U.S. service members, at the end of fiscal year 2025, the office said in a late July report to Congress.
“Similarly, DoW-wide budgets for CHMR in FY26 were cut and CHMR staffing billets and programs across the DoW, including at U.S. Combatant Commands (CCMDs), were gradually reorganized, reduced, and/or terminated by the end of FY25,” CPCE said in the report.
Still, the center said it has continued to back up U.S. military commands by studying past operations, running war games and hosting workshops.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said last September that “we untie the hands of our warfighters to intimidate, demoralize, hunt and kill the enemies of our country.”
“No more politically correct and overbearing rules of engagement, just common sense, maximum lethality and authority for warfighters,” Hegseth said on Sept. 30 in his address to general and flag officers at Quantico, Va.
Earlier this year, Hegseth told senators that the U.S. has an “ironclad commitment” to do more than other nations to prevent civilian deaths when pressed about cuts to the department’s division instructed in helping prevent civilian casualties.
On February 28, 2026, a missile strike destroyed the Shajareh Tayyebeh Elementary School, a girls’ school in Minab, southern Iran. The attack, which human rights groups said was carried out by the U.S., killed over 150 people, including about 120 to 125 children. The Pentagon has insisted the incident is under investigation.
The Pentagon said in the report that no incidents were assessed in which civilian casualties were more likely than happened during operations in Syria and Iraq in 2025, conducted primarily under the Combined Joint Task Force–Operation Inherent Resolve.
During a group operation, supported by air assets, on January 27, 2018, in Al Baghdadi, Iraq, eight civilians were killed and 14 injured.
In 2025, the U.S. Africa Command (Africom) looked into six reports of civilian harm, including two from 2024, according to the Defense Department (DOD) report.
Africom launched investigations into two reports. One was closed after an initial assessment, while three assessments of other reports remain ongoing.
“Concerning reports for which a final determination was made in 2025, USAFRICOM determined that two of the reports did not involve incidents in which civilian casualties more likely than not resulted from U.S. military operations and found that one report involved an incident in which U.S. military operations resulted in the death of one civilian,” DOD said in the report.
A U.S. airstrike in El Burr, Somalia, on April 1, 2018, resulted in one civilian death, Africom’s 2025 assessment found. The command previously acknowledged the death of two civilians, a woman and a child, from the same attack.
The U.S. military began striking alleged drug-trafficking boats in the Caribbean Sea in early September last year in what the Trump administration dubbed an effort to curb the flow of illicit drugs in the region and safeguard the homeland.
The deadly strikes, which have been carried out by special forces and have been panned as a violation of international law by law-of-war experts, have expanded to the Eastern Pacific. So far, the U.S. military has carried out at least 66 strikes and has killed a minimum of 220 “narco-terrorists,” according to social media posts by top Trump administration officials and U.S. Southern Command (Southcom).
There were no incidents where “civilian casualties more likely than not” resulted from U.S. military operations in the Southcom theater as of Feb. 1 this year, the Pentagon told Congress in the report.
Some details of the report were reported earlier by NBC News.
Gen. Francis L. Donovan, the commander of Southcom, told senators during a hearing in March that the deadly boat strikes “aren’t the answer” to the U.S. drug problems.
Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.), who sits on SASC, pressed Secretary of State Marco Rubio during a June hearing on the administration’s targeting criteria, saying it is “odd — especially since the administration has always announced this is against narco-traffickers — how odd it is that the presence of narcotics on a boat is not one of the targeting criteria.”
Rubio said the military uses three elements to justify a strike but did not elaborate.
“There have been strikes that they have walked away from because it doesn’t meet the criteria,” Rubio said.