Human rights group Amnesty International said Wednesday that the United States may have committed a war crime with a springtime strike on a prison in Yemen.
The group claimed Wednesday its own investigation found “that a US air strike on a migrant detention centre in Sa’ada, north-western Yemen, on 28 April 2025 that killed and injured dozens of African migrants amounted to an indiscriminate attack.”
“US authorities must promptly and transparently investigate it as a war crime,” Amnesty International added in a Wednesday write-up.
In March, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth vowed an “unrelenting” campaign against Yemen’s Houthi militants until the group halted attacking vessels in the Red Sea.
“This campaign is about freedom of navigation and restoring deterrence. The minute the Houthis say, ‘We’ll stop shooting at your ships, we’ll stop shooting at your drones,’ this campaign will end,” Hegseth said in an interview on Fox News at the time.
“But until then, it will be unrelenting.”
President Trump ordered strikes against Houthi targets late last winter, pledging to use “overwhelming lethal force” until the militants ended their attacks on civilian and military ships in the important maritime corridor.
Amnesty International said Wednesday that the Yemen strike “inflicted catastrophic civilian harm on vulnerable migrants” most kept in the detention center by the Houthis only due to “irregular immigration status.”
“The harrowing testimonies from survivors paint a clear picture of a civilian building, packed with detainees, being bombed without distinction. This was a lethal failure by the US to comply with one of its core obligations under international humanitarian law: to do everything feasible to verify whether the object attacked was a military objective,” Kristine Beckerle, deputy regional director for the Middle East and North Africa for Amnesty International, said in the report.
Late last year, Amnesty International also alleged that Israel was committing genocide in Gaza during its war against Hamas in the region.
The Hill has reached out to the Pentagon for comment.
