Source: Amnesty International –
One year on from the deadly US air strike on a Huthi-run migrant detention centre in Sa’ada, north-western Yemen, there has been no discernible progress towards justice and reparation, and survivors are still struggling with severe physical and psychological trauma, Amnesty International said today. The organization had called for the 28 April 2025 strike by US forces, which killed and injured dozens of African migrants to be investigated as a war crime, and this month spoke once again to six survivors of the attack who detailed the human costs they had experienced.
Rather than taking credible steps towards ensuring accountability, including through effective and prompt investigations, or providing reparations to harmed civilians, the US administration under President Donald Trump has gutted measures and mechanisms intended to prevent, mitigate and respond to civilian harm caused by US military operations abroad and has threatened attacks certain to cause devastating harm to civilians. Eleven months after the air strike on the Yemeni migrant detention centre, an unlawful US air strike killed 156 people including 120 children at the Minab school in Iran.
The Trump administration’s approach to its air strikes in Yemen from March to May 2025 should have set off alarm bells in the USA and around the world, clearly signalling an urgent need to strengthen measures to protect civilians.
Nadia Daar, Director of Amnesty International USA.
“The Trump administration’s approach to its air strikes in Yemen from March to May 2025 should have set off alarm bells in the USA and around the world, clearly signalling an urgent need to strengthen measures to protect civilians. Instead the US administration has systematically weakened safeguards, shrinking offices aimed at reducing civilian harm, while simultaneously displaying a dangerous disregard for the lives of civilians endangered by armed conflicts. Against that backdrop, attacks such as the US attack on a school in Minab in Iran, which killed 156 people including 120 children, were a tragically foreseeable consequence of a failure to implement robust civilian-harm mitigation efforts,” said Nadia Daar, Director of Amnesty International USA.
One year on, US officials have failed to hold anyone accountable or even to clarify the status or outcome of the investigations they had announced a year earlier.
Erika Guevara Rosas, Senior Director for Research, Advocacy, Policy and Campaigns at Amnesty International’s International Secretariat.
“One year on, US officials have failed to hold anyone accountable or even to clarify the status or outcome of the investigations they had announced a year earlier. Families of those killed in the attack on the detention centre in Yemen are still being denied basic information about what happened, remain without justice for their loved ones. Survivors continue to struggle, lacking the means to secure a decent living or even receive adequate medical treatment,” said Erika Guevara Rosas, Senior Director for Research, Advocacy, Policy and Campaigns at Amnesty International’s International Secretariat.
“They must receive full, effective, and prompt reparation, including restitution, compensation, rehabilitation, satisfaction and guarantees of non-repetition, through an effective and accessible mechanism.”
The organization based these findings on an its initial investigation published on 19 May 2025, and follow up research published in October 2025, where Amnesty spoke with 15 survivors and requested information from the USA. The organization re-interviewed six of those survivors in April 2026.
The 28 April 2025 strike had been one of the worst civilian tolls from a US strike that Amnesty International had documented in years. Less than a year later on 16 March 2026, Amnesty International documented another egregious attack in terms of civilian harm, the US attack on a school in Minab, Iran that killed 156 people, including over 120 children. The organization’s investigation found that the USA violated international humanitarian law by failing to take all feasible precautions to avoid civilian harm in carrying out the attack.
Despite this, President Trump and high-level US officials, including Secretary of Defense, Pete Hegseth, have expressed contempt for international law and rules and restraints intended to mitigate civilian harm.
Following the air strike in April 2025, a US defense official said they were assessing “claims” of civilian casualties. But, nearly a year later, US Central Command has not released its assessments, nor announced the results of any investigations so far conducted. On 4 March 2026, Secretary of Defence Pete Hegeseth said that an investigation into Minab was ongoing.
On 1 May, the Department of Defense is required to issue its Annual Report on Civilian Casualties in connection with any United States military operations in 2025, pursuant to Section 1057 of the National Defense Authorization Act.
“In order to stop this deadly spiral, the USA must ensure prompt, transparent, impartial, independent and effective investigations into attacks that have resulted in civilian casualties, including those in Yemen and Iran. The US Congress must also urgently step up its oversight role and demand answers, including a public accounting of these strikes and the adequate and prompt provision of reparation to the civilians that have been harmed and ensure it is not appropriating funds that may contribute to breaches of international law,” said Erika Guevara Rosas.