The Defense Department killed or wounded hundreds of civilians in airstrikes last year only to insist that there had been no noncombatant casualties.
Just three U.S. attacks in April of last year against targets in Yemen, carried out as part of Operation Rough Rider, caused hundreds of casualties. Secretary Pete Hegseth, 46, launched that campaign, which lasted 53 days, with the goal of stopping Iran-backed Houthi rebels attacking shipping vessels and U.S. allies in the Middle East.
Sources with knowledge of the strikes told NBC News on Thursday that the first two attacks likely killed 150 civilians and wounded 200 more. They could not provide clear numbers for the third.
The Pentagon has previously claimed there were no such deaths or injuries during the bombing campaign, even though human rights groups reported the April attacks had resulted in “large-scale civilian casualties” and demanded the U.S. investigate them as potential war crimes.
Documents obtained by NBC show Democratic lawmakers demanding answers from the Defense Department in the months since. One response to Sen. Elizabeth Warren reveals that U.S. Central Command has now reviewed dozens of strikes, including the three April attacks, and concluded they “more likely than not resulted in civilian casualties.”
Amnesty International has blasted both the White House and the Pentagon for their lack of transparency over the killings. “The Trump administration’s response has been abysmal,” Amanda Kalsing, the organization’s national director for government relations, said. “This administration has gutted the Pentagon’s programs meant to prevent civilian harm and has evaded any public accounting for cases of civilian harm.”
She added that the Defense Department has been similarly unforthcoming about the U.S. strike on a school in the southern Iranian city of Minab earlier this year, which is thought to have killed 156 people—120 of them children.
The Daily Beast has contacted the Pentagon for comment on this story. An official told NBC the department had no announcements at present, and that it would be submitting an “annual report regarding casualties” for 2025 “in the coming months.”
