Centcom reviewing 15 more Yemen incidents for possible civilian toll
An internal Pentagon assessment sent to Congress on Tuesday found that three U.S. strikes on Yemen in April 2025 killed 153 civilians and wounded 243 more, according to the document. The finding marks the first formal acknowledgment by the Trump administration of the scale of civilian casualties during its 2025 bombing campaign against Iran-backed Houthi rebels.
The 12-page unclassified assessment was transmitted to congressional defense committees by Colby Jenkins, a senior Pentagon official, and outlines the Pentagon’s assessments of civilian casualties across all of its global operations in 2025. U.S. Central Command, or Centcom, which oversees U.S. military operations in the Middle East, found that the three strikes caused the casualties. Centcom is reviewing 15 additional incidents during the campaign against the Houthis that could have resulted in civilian casualties, the assessment said.
Trump launched the military strikes against the Houthis last spring, targeting the group’s top leadership and military infrastructure in an effort to stop it from attacking commercial vessels transiting the Red Sea. Officials described the campaign as mirroring the one Trump has carried out against Iran this year. The bombing campaign lasted 53 days and included strikes on more than 1,000 Houthi targets, though officials said the group proved more resilient than U.S. officials first anticipated.
Trump declared a ceasefire in early May 2025 that brought the bombing campaign to an end, saying the militant group would no longer target ships in the Middle East. Officials and analysts said the strikes significantly degraded, but did not eliminate, the Houthi threat to the region.
The Houthis on Tuesday struck a cargo ship in the Red Sea, after declaring it would impose a naval blockade on Saudi Arabia against the backdrop of the continuing conflict between the United States and Iran.
The assessment does not include Trump’s ongoing military operations against Iran, which began in late February, including a strike on an Iranian girl’s elementary school near Minab that killed more than 100 children. U.S. military investigators believe the United States was responsible for that strike, The Wall Street Journal previously reported. A Pentagon investigation into the school strike is continuing. Trump last month suggested in an interview with Fox News that the United States might not release the investigation’s final results. “I don’t think anybody’s gonna ever be able to say what happened there,” he said in the interview.
The assessment of last year’s civilian casualties found that U.S. strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities in June 2025, an operation dubbed Operation Midnight Hammer, caused no civilian deaths or injuries.
It also assessed that “there were no incidents in which civilian casualties more likely than not resulted from U.S. military operations” in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific Ocean, where U.S. Southern Command, which oversees American forces in Latin America and the Caribbean, has carried out dozens of strikes on alleged drug smuggling boats.
U.S. lawmakers remain sharply divided over the boat strikes in the region. Republicans have largely supported the campaign as part of the administration’s efforts to crack down on drug flows into the United States. Democrats have sharply criticized the campaign, questioning the legality of the strikes and the Pentagon’s claims that the passengers of the boats it struck were all narcoterrorists.
The Pentagon did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the report.