United States airstrikes in areas controlled by the Houthis in Yemen caused at least 576 civilian casualties from December 2023 to May 2025, according to a Costs of War report by the Yemen-based organization Mwatana for Human Rights. This figure includes 213 civilian deaths and 363 civilian injuries, including 50 children and 25 women.
The report is part of the Costs of War project at the Watson School for International and Public Affairs, which aims to “look at the human toll of U.S. foreign military operations from the perspective of people who are based in those countries,” said Stephanie Savell, the project director and a senior fellow at the Watson School.
While a 2024 Costs of War paper focused on the financial cost of U.S. military operations “against Houthis in and around Yemen,” the new report examines the “human costs” of 46 airstrike incidents that occurred during two military operations between December 2023 and May 2025.
“For the purposes of this study, any individuals whose civilian status could not be verified were excluded from the count of civilian casualties,” the report says. That means the number is probably an underestimate, according to Khawla Al-Rowaishan, director of accountability and redress at Mwatana for Human Rights and one of the main authors of the report.
The Costs of War project kept this report’s authors anonymous because researchers in Yemen can face threats of harm for documenting state violence and violence against civilians, Savell said. For this story, Al-Rowaishan agreed to speak with The Herald on the record.
The first round of attacks analyzed in this report were carried out from Dec. 18, 2023 to Jan. 19, 2025, during former President Joe Biden’s administration. These airstrikes killed five civilians and caused 22 injuries. The second round of strikes — carried out from March 15 to May 6, 2025, during President Trump’s second administration — resulted in the majority of the civilian casualties documented in the report, with 208 deaths and 341 injuries.
These numbers exceed figures the Pentagon reported to Congress, which cited 153 civilian deaths and 243 injuries in 2025.
“The Pentagon has a demonstrated record of denying responsibility for civilian harm caused by its forces, and of misleading the public, even in the face of sturdy evidence,” C.J. Chivers, a war reporter and visiting professor of the practice of international and public affairs, wrote in an email to The Herald. “Given all these enduring obstacles to clarity, reports like this advance our collective understanding of modern war, its characteristic forms of violence and the behaviors and credibility of powerful participants.”
The Pentagon did not respond to a request for comment.
Yemen has been suffering from armed conflict since 2014, which has harmed its economy and living conditions, the report says. U.S. military actions striking essential service facilities has likely “expanded the cycle of poverty in Yemen by increasing unemployment and multiplying the number of households that lost breadwinners and sources of income,” the report reads.
To document these human costs, Mwatana for Human Rights’s field team carried out two methods of research, according to Al-Rowaishan.
The first method involved visits to airstrike sites right after attacks, where researchers would interview survivors and collect photographic, video and physical evidence of the destruction, Al-Rowaishan said. The second method involved interviewing families affected by the incidents several months afterwards to get a sense of the impacts of these attacks on their lives, she added.
For example, the report illustrated the impacts of the destruction of a government complex in the center of the Raymah Governorate by citing an eyewitness testimony: “This was the only achievement of the state in Raymah throughout the republican era … it has been destroyed,” the local resident said in the report.
Researchers on the field team faced many challenges, according to Al-Rowaishan. “It’s not easy to go outside and have conversations with people, especially in this situation,” she said. “We are all the time in danger — not just me and our film team, (but) I think all Yemeni people.”
After conducting interviews in Al Hudaydah and Sana’a, two members of Mwatana for Human Rights’s research teams were “arrested by the Houthis,” Al-Rowaishan said. “There (are) many challenges in this aspect, but we still struggle to continue our work.”
Since the release of the report, several congressional offices have written to the Cost of War project “asking to speak to the authors and hear more about the content of the report,” Savell said.
By investigating the human toll of U.S. military actions, the Cost of War project aims to hold leaders accountable, Savell said.
“Research has shown that when you shine light on the human toll of war operations, it is more likely that governments can make better policy choices that protect more lives.”
“The real impact, the real suffering, is in the civilian people,” Al-Rowaishan said. “It’s necessary to call for redress, for reparation, for compensation, for rehabilitation.”
Correction: A previous version of this article misstated what happened to two of the members of Mwatana for Human Rights’s research teams. The Herald regrets the error.
Correction: A previous version of this article misstated Chivers's title at Brown. The Herald regrets the error.
Ivy Huang is a University News and Science & Research editor from New York City. Concentrating in English, she has a passion for literature and American history. Her favorite authors include Marilynne Robinson, Vladimir Nabokov, and Toni Morrison. Outside of writing, she enjoys playing basketball, watching documentaries, and beating her high score on Subway Surfers.
