Middle East
Dozens killed in US strike on purported detention center in Yemen, visuals show
By
The Washington Post May 4, 2025
Alex Horton, Imogen Piper, Cate Brown and Evan Hill
The Washington Post May 4, 2025
A Yemeni soldier inspects the damage reportedly caused by U.S. airstrikes in Sanaa, Yemen, Sunday, April 27, 2025. (Osamah Abdulrahman/AP)
A U.S. airstrike in Yemen on Monday appears to have killed at least three dozen people in a Houthi-run compound that human rights researchers say has been used for years as a detention center and at times for military purposes, according to images of the aftermath reviewed by The Washington Post.
Houthi rebels say at least 68 people were killed and dozens more were injured in what they said was a U.S. strike on a prison holding African migrants. The Post’s analysis of visuals found at least 38 people who appeared to be dead and 32 injured, numbers that are almost certainly an undercount given the limited available imagery.
It is not clear from the videos who among the dead are civilians; no military equipment or garb is visible in any visuals reviewed by The Post. Visuals could be located from only one of the two buildings that were destroyed in the attack.
The Houthis have targeted American military forces in the Red Sea, as well as commercial vessels and Israeli military sites to protest the ongoing war in Gaza, which has killed many thousands of civilians. In mid-March, the Trump campaign launched “Operation Rough Rider,” targeting Houthi rebel leadership and infrastructure.
Central Command, which oversees U.S. operations in the Middle East, has not said what it was targeting in the recent strike but is “aware of the claims of civilian casualties” and is assessing them, a defense official has said. The U.S. military has said its Yemen operations are executed with “detailed and comprehensive intelligence” to minimize risk to civilians.
The current functions of the compound in northwest Yemen could not be independently determined. The United Nations has described it as having once included a military barracks and more recently as a migrant detention center. One human rights researcher told The Post that it ceased serving military purposes a decade ago, while another said it is used by the Houthis for other purposes and “the migrants are only a front.”
Analysts and current and former U.S. officials said the strike appears to add to mounting evidence that the Trump administration has not prioritized minimizing civilian casualties in its ongoing air campaign against the Houthis. The Defense Department is moving to dismantle efforts focused on reducing civilian harm in U.S. military operations, The Post has reported, so commanders can focus more on “lethality” when conducting military strikes.
“This strike in particular and the campaign in Yemen in general clearly show a higher tolerance for civilian casualties than previously seen in Yemen and even in the wars against ISIS,” a U.S. official familiar with the campaign said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss ongoing operations. The same official confirmed that Monday’s strike was carried out by the United States.
The videos provide a graphic view of the carnage. “I’m dying now,” one man tells the person filming the video, his body pinned between two slabs of concrete. Dozens of people are crushed by debris, their limbs protruding from the dust. Some are dismembered in the blast. Other remains are likely buried or in parts of the building not visible in the imagery.
Emergency workers sift through the debris, looking for survivors among scattered mattresses, clothes and plastic bowls. The videos and photos were released either by Houthi-owned channels or journalists subject to strict Houthi oversight.
Satellite imagery taken after the strike in the southwest outskirts of the city of Saada shows two large buildings destroyed inside a walled compound occupying about 50 acres, known as Saada City Remand Prison. Both buildings are similar in design and about 120 feet long and just over 500 feet apart, separated by a road.
Other buildings in the same compound were struck in January 2022 by Saudi forces, killing at least 91 detainees and wounding at least 236, according to the U.N. human rights office. At the time, the compound held 1,300 pre-trial detainees and 700 migrants, the U.N. said. It was one of the deadliest strikes of a years-long Saudi-led campaign against the Houthis, which received substantial U.S. assistance.
After the 2022 attack, a Saudi military spokesman said the site was a legitimate target because it was used by the Houthis for military purposes.
Houthi militants used the detention center in northwestern Yemen for military purposes up until 2015 or 2016, when it was converted to a prison, said a Yemen human rights researcher who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of retribution. The other Yemen-based researcher, Adnan Al-Gabarni, called the compound an important site and said much is unknown about it.
Representatives from the International Committee for the Red Cross have conducted regular visits to the prison complex since 2018; they declined to comment on the internal conditions of the facility. Visiting the site after the Saudi strike, U.N. human rights representatives said in a report that they saw no signs the compound had a military function.
The Saudi bombing had “catastrophic results for vulnerable migrants being detained by the Houthis,” said Christopher Le Mon, former deputy assistant secretary of state for democracy, human rights and labor in the Biden administration. Speaking about the U.S. military, he said, “It’s just inconceivable that the military wouldn’t have anticipated a serious risk of civilian casualties.”
An ICRC delegation visited the site on Monday following the strike. The ICRC said teams from the Yemen Red Crescent Society had evacuated wounded migrants to two hospitals nearby.
Travelers from African countries have transited through the desert corridor for decades, according to a 2023 Human Rights Watch report, which estimated that more than 90 percent of those en route to Saudi Arabia come from Ethiopia. They have been routinely detained by Houthi forces, who are under increasing pressure from Saudi authorities to stop illegal migration, and often subjected to torture and abuse while detained at centers like the one in Saada, according to the rights monitor.
“African migrants locked up in a prison in northern Yemen are not a lawful military objective,” said Brian Finucane, a former legal adviser at the State Department, noting that the U.S. military has not publicly identified what its target was or whether it was a mistake.
The number of civilians killed in Yemen has exponentially increased in the weeks since the campaign began. According to Airwars, a Britain-based watchdog organization, U.S. strikes were estimated to have killed 27 to 56 Yemeni civilians in March. The nonprofit Yemen Data Project estimates that at least 97 strikes in March killed 28 people and wounded 66. The casualty toll in April to date is believed to be much higher.
The Houthis said more than 70 people were killed by an airstrike on a Houthi-controlled oil port on April 18.
After Monday’s strike, video released by the Houthi-owned al-Masirah television channel showed remnants of munitions and what appeared to be at least two craters where the building once stood. The visual evidence indicates multiple U.S.-manufactured GBU-39s were dropped, said Trevor Ball, a former Army explosive ordnance disposal technician. The guided munitions are designed to be capable of reducing risk to civilians with precision targeting and a relatively small size.
There are no clear signs in the images that the damaged building had any military use, Ball said. The foundation is basic concrete, and the inside appeared to be sleeping quarters.
Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell said Tuesday the U.S. has struck 1,000 targets, or about 23 per day, since March 15. That pace has raised questions among some experts about whether commanders and analysts can properly assess targets.
“They’ve had some questionable strikes already, and with the operation tempo, chance of mistakes and shortcuts are just going to increase,” Ball said.
Democratic lawmakers last week said they were alarmed by what they called an apparent “serious disregard” for innocent life following reports of deaths in other strikes.
Abbie Cheeseman and Mohamed El Chamaa in Beirut and Warren Strobel and Meg Kelly in Washington contributed to this report.