Amnesty: US strike on Yemen prison that killed dozens may be war crime

Rights group says April attack appeared to be ‘indiscriminate’ with no clear military objective at facility holding African migrants; US promises assessment soon

An American airstrike in April on a prison run by Yemen’s Houthi rebels that killed over 60 detained African migrants should be investigated as a possible war crime, activists said Wednesday.

The call by Amnesty International renews scrutiny on the April 28 strike in Yemen’s Saada province. The attack came as part of an intense campaign of airstrikes waged under US President Donald Trump targeting rebels for disrupting shipping through the Red Sea corridor amid the Israel-Hamas war.

The US military’s Central Command has yet to offer any explanation for the strike on the prison, which previously had been hit by a Saudi-led coalition also fighting against the Houthis and had been known to hold detained African migrants trying to reach Saudi Arabia through the war zone.

“We take all reports of civilian harm seriously and are working to release the assessment results for Operation Rough Rider soon,” said US Navy Capt. Tim Hawkins, a spokesperson for Central Command.

Dozens killed

After the strike, the Houthis displayed debris likely from two 250-pound precision-guided GBU-39 small-diameter bombs used by the US military, Amnesty said. Survivors interviewed by Amnesty, all Ethiopian migrants detained while trying to reach Saudi Arabia, told the rights group that they saw no Houthi fighters posted inside the building.

Amnesty said the strike appeared to be an “indiscriminate attack” as it assessed there was no clear military objective. International law prohibits striking sites like hospitals and prisons unless the structures are being used to plan attacks or stockpile weapons — and even then, every precaution should be made to avoid hurting civilians.

Amnesty said the Houthis recently put the death toll in the strike at 61, lower than the 68 it initially reported. Gunfire could be heard in footage filmed after the airstrikes, with the Houthis saying their guards fired warning shots around the time of the strikes.

The April strike recalled a similar strike by a Saudi-led coalition battling the Houthis in 2022 on the same compound, which caused a collapse killing 66 detainees and wounding 113 others, a United Nations report later said. The Houthis shot dead 16 detainees who fled after the strike and wounded another 50, the UN said.

The Houthis denied any misconduct in the April strike, but Amnesty noted that the rebels’ “ongoing crackdown on… activists, journalists, human rights defenders and humanitarian workers” limited its ability to investigate. The Houthis hold at least 59 United Nations staffers and more aid group workers, with the rebels seizing electronics at UN offices in recent days. The Iranian-backed rebels, under economic pressure, also increasingly have been threatening Saudi Arabia in recent weeks as well.

“I didn’t actually believe that it was possible that the US would carry out an airstrike on the same compound, resulting in a significant level of civilian harm,” said Kristine Beckerle, Amnesty’s deputy Middle East and North Africa director. “It kind of defies belief that the US would not have known.”

US campaign believed to have killed other civilians

The US airstrikes against the Houthis began over the rebels’ attacks on shipping under US President Joe Biden. However, the attacks sharply escalated under Trump’s Operation Rough Rider, hitting some 1,000 targets in Yemen.

Those strikes hit power stations, mobile phone infrastructure, and military targets in Yemen. However, activists say the attacks also killed civilians, particularly an April strike on an oil depot that killed more than 70 people.

Airwars, a United Kingdom-based group studying casualties in aerial warfare, believes strikes in the Operation Rough Rider killed at least 224 civilians during the weeklong campaign — nearly as many civilians as had been killed over more than 20 years of American strikes on the country.

US Army Gen. Michael Kurilla, CENTCOM’s former commander, promised details on civilian casualties in the Yemen campaign “absolutely” would be made public during congressional testimony in June, though that has yet to happen.

“One of the things that was relatively devastating is again you’re talking about people who left Ethiopia to travel to Yemen because they’re trying to get to the Gulf” to earn money for their families back home, Beckerle said. “They have to have their family send money to them in Yemen to deal with the effects of the injury.”

The Houthis — whose slogan calls for “Death to America, Death to Israel, [and] a Curse on the Jews” — began attacking Israel and maritime traffic in November 2023, a month after the October 7 Hamas massacre in southern Israel.

The Houthis also fired over 130 ballistic missiles and dozens of drones and cruise missiles at Israel, including one that killed a civilian and wounded several others in Tel Aviv in July 2024.

In response, Israel has attacked the Houthis, located some 1,800 kilometers (1,100 miles) away, 19 times.

Houthi attacks have halted since a US-brokered ceasefire in Gaza began earlier this month.