Jack Reed calls for Hegseth ‘reckoning’ over civilian casualties in Yemen strikes
Sen. Jack Reed (D-RI) blamed War Secretary Pete Hegseth for 153 civilian deaths in Yemen across three U.S. strikes, saying it was the continuation of a “pattern” with him and calling for a “reckoning.”
The War Department released its annual civilian casualty report, revealing that 153 Yemeni civilians were killed and 243 wounded in three strikes during the U.S. campaign against the Houthis, with 80 of these being killed in the Ras Isa terminal bombing on April 17, 2025. Reed, the top Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee, cast personal blame upon Hegseth for the casualties, connecting the numbers to his actions as war secretary.
“I am disturbed by this report and by the pattern it represents under Secretary Hegseth’s leadership,” Reed said, calling the 2025 campaign in Yemen “poorly conceived.”
“This did not happen in a vacuum,” Reed added. “During his tenure, Secretary Hegseth has gutted the Civilian Protection Center of Excellence, pushed out senior [judge advocate general] officers who advise commanders on the laws of war, and boasted about discarding what he calls ‘stupid rules of engagement.’ The same Yemen campaign that produced these casualties is the one where the [War Department] Inspector General found Secretary Hegseth shared classified strike details over Signal, putting the pilots flying that mission at risk.”
Reed complained that the Pentagon had delayed the release of the civilian casualty report for months and has not submitted an assessment of the Minab school strike, where over 100 schoolgirls were killed in a strike on a school during the opening hours of Operation Epic Fury.
“Accountability for these losses is required by law and basic decency,” Reed concluded. “Secretary Hegseth owes the families of these victims, our service members, and the American people a direct and honest reckoning.”
US KILLED 153 CIVILIANS IN THREE STRIKES ON YEMEN IN 2025, PENTAGON SAYS
According to the Pentagon civilian casualty report, the 153 civilian deaths during Operation Rough Rider in Yemen accounted for all civilians killed by the U.S. military in 2025, meaning no civilians were killed in strikes in Somalia, Syria, Iraq, and Iran, the other named active conflicts in the report.
Subsections of the report were devoted to each of the three strikes, saying that sufficient information was available through U.S. intelligence sources, imagery, and open-source reporting. In every case, it noted that “ex gratia was determined to not be appropriate for this incident.”