Pentagon Finally Admits 153 Civilians Died in 2025 Yemen Strikes, After Year of Denials

What the report actually says

The Pentagon submitted its annual civilian casualty report, known as a 1057 report, to Congress late Monday. CBS News obtained a copy and confirmed it: 153 civilians killed, 243 wounded, all from three airstrikes in Yemen during 2025's Operation Rough Rider.

The first time the Defense Department has publicly owned that number came in this report. For over a year, the department's public position was that no civilians died in the campaign, according to NBC News.

The three incidents the Pentagon now says "more likely than not" harmed civilians: an April 6 strike near a private house outside Sanaa that killed five people, an April 17 strike on Ras Isa Port in Hodeidah that killed 80 and wounded 171, and an April 28 strike near Saada that killed 68. The Ras Isa Port strike is the single deadliest incident the report acknowledges.

The Pentagon says it did not conduct site visits or interview witnesses to reach these figures. Assessments were built from satellite imagery, intelligence reporting and open-source material, according to CBS News. Fifteen more incidents are still under review.

The numbers don't match outside trackers

Airwars, which tracks civilian harm across conflict zones, estimated last year that at least 258 civilians were likely killed in the same campaign. The Yemen Data Project put the toll even higher: at least 238 killed and 467 injured. The Pentagon's own count, 153 dead, sits well below both.

A government official who reviewed the Pentagon report told The Intercept the department's figures are "lowball numbers." That's an allegation from an anonymous source, not an established fact, but it lines up with the gap between the Pentagon's tally and the independent trackers' work.

One incident is worth flagging specifically. The Intercept reported that the April 28 strike near Saada, which the Pentagon says killed 68, hit an immigrant detention center and killed mostly Ethiopian civilians with no combatants present. Amnesty International documented that strike last year. U.S. Central Command said at the time it was still assessing civilian harm reports from that period. Human Rights Watch has separately called the Ras Isa Port strike "an apparent war crime."

What the report leaves out entirely

This report contains zero civilian deaths from the boat-strike campaign in the Caribbean and Pacific.

That campaign, which the Trump administration says targets drug traffickers from cartels it has designated terrorist organizations, has killed more than 220 people since it began in September 2025, according to The Intercept. CBS News puts the strike count at roughly 120 last year and 95 so far this year. The Pentagon's own report counts none of those deaths as civilian harm.

Some legal experts argue the boat strikes amount to extrajudicial killings, because U.S. forces are barred from intentionally targeting people, including suspected criminals, outside the recognized legal standards for military force. The administration disputes that characterization and maintains the strikes target designated terrorist organizations. A Pentagon official briefing on the matter last fall told colleagues, according to an Intercept investigation, that some people killed in the initial September 2 strike may have been trafficking victims rather than traffickers, an allegation that has not been independently confirmed.

It's fair to note the administration's position has been consistent: these are lawful strikes against cartel operations it says function as terrorist networks threatening American lives through drug trafficking. Whether that legal framing holds up is a genuinely contested question, not a settled one, and no court or independent tribunal has ruled on it.

Why this took so long

Congress required these annual reports starting with the 2018 defense policy bill, after nearly 500 civilians were confirmed killed in U.S. operations in 2017. The law exists specifically so lawmakers get a yearly accounting.

This year's report arrived over a year after the Yemen strikes happened and only after sustained reporting pressure from The Washington Post and NBC News. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has cut offices responsible for tracking and mitigating civilian harm, telling colleagues he wants the department focused on "lethality" over what he calls "tepid legality," according to CBS News.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren received a letter from Derrick Anderson, the Pentagon's assistant secretary for special operations and low-intensity conflict, laying out the three incidents without full casualty figures attached, according to reporting reviewed by DC Transparency.

The unresolved question sitting on top of all this: will the Pentagon ever issue a public accounting of the boat strikes the same way it just did for Yemen, or will that campaign stay outside the congressionally mandated casualty-reporting system entirely. Nothing in Monday's report answers that.