US military strikes on the Ras Issa Port in Hodeidah, Yemen, on April 17, 2025, caused dozens of civilian casualties and significant damage to port infrastructure, Human Rights Watch said today. The attack should be investigated as a war crime.
As part of its military campaign against the Houthis, who control much of Yemen, that began on March 15, the United States targeted Ras Issa Port, one of three ports in the town of Hodeidah through which about 70 percent of Yemen's commercial imports and 80 percent of its humanitarian assistance passes. Human Rights Watch identified via satellite imagery multiple attack sites. The independent research group Airwars found that the strikes killed 84 civilians and injured over 150.
"The US government's decision to strike Ras Issa Port, a critical entry point for aid in Yemen, while hundreds of workers were present demonstrates a callous disregard for civilians' lives," said Niku Jafarnia, Yemen and Bahrain researcher at Human Rights Watch. "At a time when the majority of Yemenis don't have adequate access to food and water, the attack's impact on humanitarian aid could be enormous, particularly after Trump administration aid cutbacks."
Sources in Yemen said that the Houthis have threatened and reportedly arrested people from areas hit by US strikes for speaking to the media or nongovernmental organizations, making it difficult to verify information about the strikes.
Human Rights Watch interviewed one person whose uncle was killed in the attack and two sources with knowledge of the destruction, including a staff member of Sana'a Center for Strategic Studies, an independent research institute. Human Rights Watch also analyzed satellite imagery, reviewed photographs and videos of the attack site, and assessed data published by the Yemen Data Project, another nongovernmental group, and Airwars. Human Rights Watch wrote to the US Defense Department on May 8 with preliminary findings but received no response.
Based on satellite imagery and other sources, the attacks on Ras Issa took place between the morning of April 17 and the morning of April 18. They destroyed fuel tanks and considerable areas of port infrastructure. Two sources said that several berths, the customs area, and cargo unloading facilities had been severely damaged or destroyed. Both sources said that initially after the attack, the destruction had significantly reduced the port's operations. Port operations are still limited.
Airwars identified 84 civilians who were killed in the attack through analyzing social media posts. Forty-nine were people who worked at the port, several were truck drivers, and two were civil defense personnel. Others may have been workers' family members. Three were identified as children. The list contained one person identified as a "colonel," but who was not necessarily a military member. The Hodeidah Branch of the government-owned Yemen Oil Company posted photographs of 49 employees they said were killed. Human Rights Watch has not independently verified the identities of those who were killed.
US Central Command said in an April 17 statement about the attacks: "Today, US forces took action to eliminate this source of fuel for the Iran-backed Houthi terrorists and deprive them of illegal revenue that has funded Houthi efforts to terrorize the entire region for over 10 years. … The objective of these strikes was to degrade the economic source of power of the Houthis."
A United Nations spokesman stated that the secretary-general was "alarmed by reports of significant damage to the port infrastructure and of possible oil leaks into the Red Sea," and that at least five humanitarian workers were reportedly injured. In a satellite image collected on the morning of April 18, long trails that appear to be fuel leaks are visible from the location of strikes and extending into the sea.
The applicable international humanitarian law during the fighting in Yemen prohibits deliberate, indiscriminate, or disproportionate attacks on civilians and civilian objects. An attack not directed at a specific military objective is indiscriminate. An attack is disproportionate if the expected civilian loss is excessive compared to the anticipated military gain. When used by an armed force or non-state armed group, port facilities and oil storage tanks can be valid military objectives. However, attacking the port fuel depot because it is an "economic source of power of the Houthis" or provides them revenue would make virtually any entity that provided economic benefit subject to military attack.
Under UN Security Council Resolution 2534 (2020), the UN Mission to Support the Hodeidah Agreement is mandated to oversee Hodeidah city and the ports of Hodeidah, Ras Issa, and Salif to ensure that no military personnel or material are present.
No information has been made public indicating that weapons or military supplies were stored at or delivered to the port, or that the oil, monitored under Resolution 2534, was being diverted to the Houthi military, which would make the US attack unlawfully indiscriminate. However, even if the attack were against valid military objectives, the harm to civilians and civilian infrastructure most likely made the attack unlawfully disproportionate. In addition to the civilian casualties, the damage to the port facilities would appear to inflict excessive immediate and longer-term harm for many Yemenis who rely on the Hodeidah ports for survival.
Under international humanitarian law, serious violations of the laws of war committed by individuals with criminal intent are war crimes. Commanders may be criminally liable under the principle of command responsibility if they knew or should have known about crimes their subordinates committed and failed to adequately prevent the crime or punish those responsible.
The US should credibly and impartially investigate this and other attacks in Yemen with civilian casualties in apparent violation of the laws of war and provide prompt compensation or "ex gratia" payments to civilians harmed. These include an April 28 attack on a migrant detention center in Saada that killed dozens of migrants and asylum seekers.
US airstrikes in Yemen began on March 15 and continued until May 6, when President Donald Trump announced an end to the strikes. The US Defense Department said it had carried out over 1,000 strikes in Yemen between March 15 and April 29.
The US has been implicated in laws-of-war violations in Yemen since it began "targeted killing operations" in 2002 against Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. Those strikes continued until at least 2019 and killed many civilians, including 12 people attending a wedding in 2013. To Human Rights Watch's knowledge, the US has never acknowledged or provided compensation for civilians harmed in this or other unlawful attacks.
The US also provided direct military assistance to the Saudi-led coalition in their conflict against the Houthis, starting in March 2015. Numerous coalition attacks during that conflict violated the laws of war.
"The recent US airstrikes in Yemen are just the latest causing civilian harm in the country over the past two decades," Jafarnia said. "The Trump administration should reverse past US practice and provide prompt compensation to those unlawfully harmed."
