WASHINGTON - Three U.S. airstrikes against Iranian-backed Houthi targets in Yemen in April 2025 killed 153 civilians and injured 243, according to an unclassified Pentagon assessment obtained by The Associated Press and sent to Congress as part of an annual civilian-casualty report.

The review examined strikes in or near the Houthi-held capital, Sanaa, and at the Ras Isa fuel port on Yemen's Red Sea coast. The port strike was the deadliest of the three, accounting for 80 civilian deaths and 171 injuries, according to the assessment described by AP.

U.S. Central Command said at the time that Ras Isa was a source of fuel and revenue for the Houthis, who had attacked commercial ships and U.S. warships in the Red Sea. CENTCOM said the operation was intended to deprive the Iran-backed group of resources and was not intended to harm Yemen's population.

The Pentagon assessment concluded that the three attacks "more likely than not" caused civilian harm. AP reported that the finding relied on U.S. intelligence, imagery and open-source reporting. The review said condolence payments were not appropriate in the three cases but did not explain that decision. Such payments are discretionary and do not constitute an admission of wrongdoing.

The military campaign arose from a real security threat. Houthi drones and missiles disrupted a vital shipping corridor leading to the Suez Canal, threatened merchant crews and drew U.S. naval forces into an intense defensive fight. The group's attacks, and its support from Iran, cannot be treated as background details or used to excuse violence against international shipping.

That context does not make the civilian toll a secondary issue. Eighty people killed at a fuel port is not a rounding error in an otherwise successful operation. It demands a clear account of what commanders believed was present, what precautions were taken, whether workers and other civilians could have been warned, and whether the expected military advantage justified the foreseeable risk.

The fact that the Pentagon assessed its own operations and reported the result to Congress is important. Democratic governments are supposed to examine the harm caused in their name. Authoritarian systems often hide casualties, punish inconvenient witnesses or substitute propaganda for an audit. The United States should hold itself to a higher standard precisely because its power rests partly on the credibility of its institutions.

Transparency, however, cannot end with a number in an annual report. The unexplained rejection of condolence payments leaves families without even a public account of why the Pentagon considered that response inappropriate. Congress should press for the assessment's methodology, the strike-by-strike findings and the legal and operational reasoning, with only genuinely sensitive details redacted.

There is also a strategic cost when civilian harm is not fully addressed. The Houthis can exploit every death for recruitment and propaganda while ignoring the danger they create by operating military and revenue networks around civilian infrastructure. Silence gives an armed group room to define the story. A prompt, evidence-based U.S. explanation is therefore not weakness; it is part of denying adversaries an information advantage.

Military necessity and civilian protection are not opposing ideas. Better intelligence, patient target development, smaller weapons, timing choices and the willingness to cancel a strike can protect civilians while preserving the ability to defend ships and allies. No system eliminates every mistake in war, but a serious military learns from each one and changes procedures when the same risks can recur.

The review arrives as Houthi attacks on Yemeni government forces, Saudi oil facilities and Red Sea shipping are again raising fears that Yemen's long conflict could widen. That makes the lessons from 2025 immediately relevant. A renewed campaign conducted without visible safeguards would repeat both the human damage and the strategic mistakes documented in the assessment.

America has the right to protect its forces, international commerce and regional partners from Houthi attacks. It also has a duty to show how 153 civilians died, what accountability followed and what will be done differently. Democratic strength is measured not only by the ability to strike an enemy, but by the willingness to confront the consequences when innocent people are caught in the operation.