In the long and troubled history of warfare's cost to the innocent, the Pentagon has formally acknowledged that U.S. military operations in 2025 killed at least 153 civilians — nearly all of them in Yemen — while simultaneously dismantling the institutional structures built to prevent such deaths. The admission arrives not as a reckoning but as a bureaucratic filing, submitted to Congress even as the office created to protect civilians has been reduced by ninety percent and its future formally proposed for elimination. What hangs in the balance is not merely a count of the dead, but the questi
Pentagon acknowledges 153 civilian deaths in 2025 operations, amid cuts to harm-prevention office
153 civilians killed and 243 injured in U.S. military operations in Yemen during 2025, with independent monitors estimating potentially higher casualty counts.
Maximum lethality, not tepid legality
Mark
Why does the Pentagon exclude the boat strikes from its official casualty count?
Mimi
Because they argue those operations fall outside the scope of the report Congress mandated. The law requires reporting on military operations, and the administration classifies the boat strikes as counternarcotics actions against criminal organizations, not traditional military campaigns. But that distinction is precisely what legal experts are challenging—they say the strikes look like military operations in everything but name.
Mark
And the civilian harm office—why cut it now, when the casualty numbers are actually going up?
Mimi
The stated reason is efficiency. The Pentagon says the center duplicates work done elsewhere. But the timing matters. Hegseth came in with a clear mandate to prioritize lethality over legal constraints. Cutting the office that exists to slow down and scrutinize operations sends a message about what the leadership actually values, regardless of what they say publicly.
Mark
Is there any chance Congress pushes back on these cuts?
Mimi
Possibly. Congress created the center by law in 2023, so they have leverage. But the current administration controls the Pentagon budget process. The real pressure point might be the girls' school investigation. If that reveals systemic failures, it becomes harder to justify dismantling the very office designed to prevent such failures.
Mark
What would the higher casualty estimates from Airwars mean if they're accurate?
Mimi
It would mean the Pentagon's official count understates the harm by roughly sixty percent. That's not a rounding error—it's a fundamentally different picture of what happened in Yemen. It raises questions about whether the military's assessment methods are adequate or whether there's institutional incentive to report lower numbers.
Mark
And the boat strikes—what's the legal problem exactly?
Mimi
U.S. military law prohibits targeting civilians, even suspected criminals, unless they meet the threshold for lawful use of force. If the strikes are targeting people based on suspected drug trafficking rather than imminent threat, that crosses into territory the military isn't supposed to operate in. It's the difference between war and law enforcement, and the military can't do both simultaneously.
Le Pouls
- Three airstrikes in Yemen — April 6, April 17, and April 28 — account for every officially acknowledged civilian death, yet independent monitors believe the true toll may be nearly double the Pentagon's count.
- Roughly 120 additional people killed in Caribbean and Pacific boat strikes have been quietly excluded from the official casualty report, drawing urgent legal challenges over whether the U.S. military is conducting extrajudicial killings.
- The office created specifically to prevent civilian harm has been gutted from forty staff to nine, with the administration's own budget documents calling for its complete elimination.
- Defense Secretary Hegseth's declared priority of 'maximum lethality' over legal caution has already cost the military its top lawyers across all three service branches, reshaping the institutional culture around accountability.
- An uninvestigated strike on a girls' school at the outset of the Iran war — with Iran claiming 170 dead — now looms as the defining test of whether post-Afghanistan civilian protection reforms were ever more than paperwork.
In the long and troubled history of warfare's cost to the innocent, the Pentagon has formally acknowledged that U.S. military operations in 2025 killed at least 153 civilians — nearly all of them in Yemen — while simultaneously dismantling the institutional structures built to prevent such deaths. The admission arrives not as a reckoning but as a bureaucratic filing, submitted to Congress even as the office created to protect civilians has been reduced by ninety percent and its future formally proposed for elimination. What hangs in the balance is not merely a count of the dead, but the question of whether a democracy's military can sustain a moral commitment to civilian protection when that commitment becomes inconvenient to those in power.
The Pentagon has formally confirmed what independent observers had long suspected: U.S. military operations in 2025 killed at least 153 civilians and wounded more than 240 others. The entire official count flows from three airstrikes in Yemen conducted between April and May as part of Operation Rough Rider, a campaign targeting the Houthi militia's capacity to threaten Red Sea shipping. On April 6, five civilians died near Sanaa. On April 17, eighty were killed near Ras Isa Port. On April 28, sixty-eight more perished near Saada. The Pentagon assessed these figures as "more likely than not" accurate — but conducted no site visits or interviews. The monitoring group Airwars estimates the actual death toll from the campaign may reach at least 258.
The official count is also notable for what it omits. A series of strikes on boats in the Caribbean Sea and Pacific Ocean — which the Trump administration frames as targeting cartel-linked drug traffickers — killed approximately 120 people in 2025 and another 95 in early 2026. These deaths appear nowhere in the Pentagon's report to Congress. Legal experts have raised serious questions about whether such strikes constitute extrajudicial killings, since U.S. military law prohibits targeting civilians — including suspected criminals — unless they meet a formal legal threshold for the use of force.
These acknowledgments arrive as the institutional infrastructure for preventing civilian harm is being systematically dismantled. The Civilian Protection Center of Excellence, established in 2022 following a series of high-profile botched airstrikes, has seen its staff fall from forty to just nine — a ninety percent reduction. The administration's 2026 budget explicitly proposes the program's elimination, cutting millions in personnel and mission support. In the vacuum left by departing leadership, the Army halted funding for its casualty data platform, and civilian harm experts quietly left their posts.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has been candid about his priorities, vowing to pursue "maximum lethality, not tepid legality" and dismissing military lawyers as "jagoffs" before firing the top judge advocates for the Army, Navy, and Air Force. When pressed by Congress, he insisted the military "never targets civilians" and has adequate safeguards in place — a claim difficult to reconcile with the budget documents and staffing figures.
The principle that protecting civilians is both a moral imperative and a strategic necessity was written into the 2022 action plan that created these programs. That principle now appears to be in active retreat. The clearest test of what remains may come soon: the Pentagon is investigating an alleged strike on a girls' school in the opening days of the Iran war, which Iran claims killed approximately 170 people. The results of that investigation have not been released — but they may reveal whether the reforms of the post-Afghanistan era were lasting commitments or merely temporary ones, now being quietly undone.
The Pentagon has now formally acknowledged what independent monitors suspected for months: U.S. military operations in 2025 killed at least 153 civilians and wounded more than 240 others. The count, submitted to Congress in a report obtained by CBS News, draws its entire tally from three airstrikes in Yemen conducted between March and May as part of Operation Rough Rider, a campaign aimed at degrading the Iran-backed Houthi militia's ability to attack commercial shipping in the Red Sea.
The three strikes tell a specific story of civilian harm. On April 6, near Sanaa, the Yemeni capital, five civilians died. Eleven days later, on April 17, near Ras Isa Port, eighty were killed. And on April 28, near Saada, another sixty-eight perished. The military determined these casualty figures were "more likely than not" based on U.S. intelligence, satellite imagery, and public reporting—but conducted no site visits or interviews to verify the assessments. The independent monitoring group Airwars, which tracks civilian casualties across conflicts, has estimated the actual toll from Operation Rough Rider may reach at least 258 deaths, suggesting the Pentagon's official count captures only a portion of the harm.
What makes the Pentagon's accounting particularly contentious is what it deliberately excludes. The report contains no casualties from a series of controversial airstrikes on boats in the Caribbean Sea and Pacific Ocean that began in September 2025. Those strikes, which the Trump administration characterizes as targeting drug traffickers from cartels it deems terrorist organizations, killed approximately 120 people in 2025 and another 95 in the first months of 2026. Legal experts have raised sharp questions about whether these operations constitute extrajudicial killings, since U.S. military law prohibits intentionally targeting civilians, including those suspected of criminal activity, unless they meet the formal legal threshold for use of military force.
The civilian casualty figures arrive amid a separate and troubling development inside the Pentagon itself. The Civilian Protection Center of Excellence, a small office created in 2022 to coordinate efforts across the Defense Department aimed at preventing harm to civilians during military operations, has been gutted. Staffing dropped from forty employees to just nine by the end of fiscal year 2025—a ninety percent reduction since March of that year, according to officials who spoke on condition of anonymity. The Pentagon's broader civilian harm mitigation program, established in 2022 following a series of botched airstrikes, has faced similar cuts. The Trump administration's 2026 budget request explicitly describes the purpose of these reductions as "disestablishment of the program," proposing cuts of over two million dollars in personnel funding and more than nine and a half million in mission support.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has made his priorities clear. He has vowed to focus military operations on "maximum lethality, not tepid legality," and in his early months at the Pentagon, he fired the top military lawyers for the Army, Navy, and Air Force. He has previously referred to military lawyers—judge advocates general—as "jagoffs." When pressed by Congress on civilian protection, Hegseth stated that the U.S. military "never targets civilians" and maintains "constructs in place to ensure that to the maximum extent possible, we do not harm or hit civilians." Yet the budget documents and staffing reductions tell a different story about institutional commitment.
The Pentagon has argued that the Civilian Protection Center of Excellence duplicates work already performed by the broader civilian harm mitigation program and should be eliminated. But the inspector general's office found that key elements of the Pentagon's civilian harm mitigation enterprise had already begun to erode due to cuts and inaction. After Hegseth arrived, senior officials proposed changes to both the center and the underlying action plan, yet as of April 2026, no decision had been made. In the absence of leadership direction, civilian harm mitigation experts departed their positions, the Army halted funding for the data management platform, and the center lost large numbers of personnel and leaders.
The Civilian Protection Center of Excellence emerged from a 2022 action plan that followed the Pentagon's acknowledgment of several failed airstrikes. Congress codified the center into law in the 2023 defense policy bill, requiring annual public reporting on its work. The opening language of the 2022 action plan stated plainly: "Protecting civilians from harm in connection with military operations is not only a moral imperative, it is also critical to achieving long-term success on the battlefield." That principle now appears to be in retreat.
The stakes may become clearer soon. The Pentagon is investigating an alleged strike on a girls' school in the opening days of the Iran war, which the Iranian government claims killed approximately 170 people. The results of that investigation have not yet been released. It could become the most significant test of whether the military's post-Afghanistan civilian harm reforms actually functioned as intended—or whether they were merely temporary measures, now being dismantled.
Citations marquantes
Protecting civilians from harm in connection with military operations is not only a moral imperative, it is also critical to achieving long-term success on the battlefield— Pentagon's 2022 Civilian Harm Mitigation and Response Action Plan
The United States military never targets civilians, and puts constructs in place to ensure that to the maximum extent possible, we do not harm or hit civilians— Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, testimony to Congress
Envie de l'histoire complète ?
Lire l'original sur CBS News ↗
War & Conflict