U.S. forces reportedly bombed a prison in Yemen in a series of strikes that killed at least 68 people:
Yemen’s Houthi rebels on Monday alleged a U.S. airstrike hit a prison holding African migrants, killing at least 68 people and wounding 47 others. The U.S. military did not acknowledge carrying out the strike.
If true, this is one of the worst attacks on civilians in Yemen since the U.S. intensified its bombing campaign six weeks ago. It also calls to mind a Saudi coalition air strike three years ago that struck a prison full of African migrants. Both this strike and the Saudi attack in 2022 occurred in Saada province. It appears that the U.S. bombed the same facility. Reuters reports:
Reuters was able to verify the location and timing of the aftermath video through visible landmarks, such as a warehouse-like building with a shredded corrugated roof; satellite images of the same location the previous day had shown the roof intact.
The location matched that of a migrant centre that had also been hit in a previous Saudi-led airstrike in 2022.
Until the illegal war ends, there will be many more civilians killed by U.S. strikes like this. The bombing must stop.
The strike on the migrants comes a little over a week after the U.S. bombed a fuel port on the western coast of Yemen and killed dozens of people, including many dock workers, truck drivers, and paramedics. As Trump’s illegal war has continued, U.S. strikes have been harming and killing civilians in increasing numbers. These strikes not only provide ready-made propaganda to the Houthis, but they also show the recklessness of the U.S. bombing campaign.
The AP report says that the U.S. military didn’t acknowledge carrying out the strike, but then the military isn’t saying much of anything about the air war it has been waging in Yemen. The administration is keeping its illegal war under wraps as much as possible in the hopes that no one here at home will notice what they are doing. Centcom takes pride in keeping the public in the dark about the illegal military campaign, saying, “We are very deliberate in our operational approach, but will not reveal specifics about what we’ve done or what we will do.”
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Daniel Larison is a contributing editor for Antiwar.com and maintains his own site at Eunomia. He is former senior editor at The American Conservative. He has been published in the New York Times Book Review, Dallas Morning News, World Politics Review, Politico Magazine, Orthodox Life, Front Porch Republic, The American Scene, and Culture11, and was a columnist for The Week. He holds a PhD in history from the University of Chicago, and resides in Lancaster, PA. Follow him on Twitter.
