2026年8月11日 / 美国东部时间晚上7:13 / 哥伦比亚广播公司（CBS）新闻
华盛顿讯——美国国防部正式承认，2025年美军行动造成超过150名无辜平民死亡、240多人受伤，其中也门境内的三次空袭造成了国防部确认的全部伤亡。
此次新公布的伤亡统计未包括加勒比海和太平洋地区空袭造成的死亡人数，此时正值国防部开展今年以来针对伊朗的更大规模军事行动之际。这一统计结果也恰逢国防部长皮特·赫格斯瑟任期内削减部分减少平民伤亡事务办公室预算之时，赫格斯瑟曾誓言要聚焦“杀伤力”而非“温和的合法性”。
哥伦比亚广播公司（CBS）获得的周一晚提交给国会的报告显示，针对也门胡塞武装组织的“ roustabout行动”（原文为Operation Rough Rider，标准译法应为“ Rough Rider行动”，此处保留原文代号）中的军事打击去年造成153名平民死亡、另有243人受伤。
2025年3月至5月，美军轰炸了也门境内与伊朗支持的胡塞武装相关的目标，以阻止该组织袭击红海商业船只。报告认定，“极有可能”在4月6日于也门首都萨那附近造成5名平民死亡，4月17日于拉塞伊萨港附近造成80人死亡，另有4月28日于萨达附近造成68人死亡。
根据报告，美军未进行实地走访或访谈来做出上述评估，而是依赖美国情报、影像资料和公开报道。
美国全国广播公司（NBC）和《华盛顿邮报》最先报道了此次评估的细节。
追踪冲突中平民伤亡的组织“空袭伤害追踪”（Airwars）去年报告称，“ Rough Rider行动”中可能有至少258名平民死亡。五角大楼的报告中这一数字为至少153人，但报告指出，截至今年年初，军方正在评估也门境内另外15起由非政府组织举报的事件。
该报告还因未纳入某些伤亡数据而引人注目。报告未包括加勒比海和太平洋地区有争议空袭造成的伤亡，去年此类空袭造成约120人伤亡，今年约95人。
特朗普政府称，2025年9月开始的针对船只的打击旨在 targeting被该政府列为恐怖组织的贩毒集团毒贩。一些法律专家表示，此类袭击构成非法法外处决，因为美军被禁止故意以平民为目标，包括涉嫌犯罪活动的个人，除非符合使用军事力量的法律标准。
国会在2018年年度国防政策法案中要求国防部提交关于上一年度平民伤亡的报告，军方术语称之为“1057报告”。2017年，即强制报告的第一年，美军行动造成近500名平民死亡。自阿富汗撤军后，这一数字大幅下降，2023年仅1人死亡，2024年2人，但随着去年针对胡塞武装的大规模军事行动，这一数字再次攀升。
“美军坚定致力于限制对平民的伤害，国防部在遵守战争法方面有着良好记录，”开篇声明的一部分写道。
五角大楼平民伤害办公室面临预算削减
此次公布的平民伤亡数据，与近期发布的另一份五角大楼报告相呼应，该报告描绘了一个负责减少美军行动中平民伤害的小型办公室的现状。该办公室在预算和人员裁减中努力维护和推进其工作，不仅涉及自身运营，还涉及美军范围广泛的平民伤害缓解项目。
7月下旬发布的《平民保护卓越中心》向国会提交的年度报告强调了其在国防部范围内不断扩大的培训项目和合作伙伴关系，同时也记录了该办公室一年来资源缩减和前途未卜的状况。
该中心表示，其继续通过举办协作研讨会、开展兵棋推演以及研究包括“ Rough Rider行动”在内的过往行动等方式，为军事司令部提供支持。“ Rough Rider行动”是去年美军针对也门胡塞目标的海空联合战役。但报告也承认了预算削减和组织变革带来的影响。
报告显示，截至2025财年末，该中心的全职员工已从40名文职、军事和合同支持人员缩减至仅9人——7名文职人员和2名美军官兵。除该中心外，五角大楼还削减了美军平民伤害缓解项目的预算和人员编制。
赫格斯瑟曾表示，他希望“解开我们作战人员的手脚”，并强调“最大杀伤力，而非温和的合法性”。在加入国防部的最初几个月里，他解雇了陆军、海军和空军的最高军事律师，此前他还将军事律师（即军法署署长）贬低为“蠢货”（原文为“jagoffs”，为俚语粗口）。
在保护平民问题上，赫格斯瑟今年早些时候对国会表示：“美军从不以平民为目标，并会尽最大可能确保不会伤害或击中平民。”
在赫格斯瑟的任期内，五角大楼一直试图撤销该卓越中心，在提交给国会的文件中辩称，该中心重复了国防部“平民伤害缓解与应对项目”已承担的多项任务。
但五角大楼还试图削弱的不仅是该中心，还有2022年设立的更大规模的军方平民伤害项目。在特朗普政府2026财年预算申请中，国防部将人员和资金削减的目的描述为“终止该项目”。根据五角大楼文件，该申请提议将人员经费削减超过200万美元，任务支持经费削减超过950万美元。
不愿公开身份的美国官员对哥伦比亚广播公司（CBS）新闻表示，自2025年3月以来，对该中心和更大范围平民伤害缓解项目的人员裁减幅度约达90%。
《平民保护卓越中心》是在五角大楼2022年公布的一项行动计划基础上设立的，此前该部门承认了近期多起空袭失误事件。
“在军事行动中保护平民免受伤害不仅是一项道德义务，也是在战场上取得长期成功的关键，”2022年8月发布的《平民伤害缓解与应对行动计划》的开篇引言写道。
该计划呼吁五角大楼更好地预防军事冲突期间对平民的伤害，具体措施包括制定标准化数据收集流程、设立专门负责平民伤害缓解工作的职位，以及建立该卓越中心。该中心将协调国防部范围内的分析、培训和经验教训总结工作。
该中心经国会在2023年年度国防政策法案中正式写入法律，该法案还要求国防部公开发布关于该中心工作的年度报告，即上月发布的这份报告。
但就在这份《平民保护卓越中心》报告发布几周前，国防部监察长的一份报告得出结论称，由于削减预算和不作为，五角大楼平民伤害缓解项目的关键要素已经开始退化。
根据该报告，赫格斯瑟加入国防部后不久，高级官员就提议对该卓越中心和行动计划进行改革。截至2026年4月，赫格斯瑟尚未做出决定。在没有采取行动的情况下，平民伤害缓解专家纷纷离职，陆军停止资助数据管理平台，该卓越中心流失了大量人员和领导。
国防部政策副部长埃尔布里奇·科尔比告诉监察长，对该卓越中心的审查应于2026年1月完成，对国防部平民伤亡政策的审查应于年底前完成。目前这些审查的进展情况尚不明确。
五角大楼未回应置评请求。
本月早些时候，《大西洋月刊》报道称，五角大楼正考虑恢复多达一半被裁减的职位，以应对平民伤亡指控，特别是伊朗战争初期针对一所女子学校的疑似空袭事件，伊朗政府称该袭击造成约170人死亡。
五角大楼尚未公布对此袭击的调查结果，这可能成为检验美军阿富汗战后平民伤害改革是否达到预期效果的最重大考验。
阅读2025年平民伤亡完整报告
U.S. military operations killed 153 civilians last year, Pentagon says
August 11, 2026 / 7:13 PM EDT / CBS News
Washington — The Pentagon has formally acknowledged that U.S. military operations killed more than 150 innocent civilians and injured over 240 people in 2025, with three airstrikes in Yemen accounting for every casualty the department confirmed.
The newly released tally, which did not include any deaths from airstrikes on boats in the Caribbean Sea and Pacific Ocean, comes as the Pentagon prosecutes a far broader military operation against Iran that began this year. It also follows cuts to some offices dedicated to mitigating civilian casualties during the tenure of Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, who has vowed to focus on “lethality” rather than “tepid legality.”
A report submitted to Congress late Monday and obtained by CBS News shows military strikes during the campaign against Yemen’s Houthi militia group, named Operation Rough Rider, killed 153 civilians and injured another 243 last year.
From March to May 2025, the U.S. military bombed targets in Yemen related to the Iran-backed Houthis to prevent the group from attacking commercial ships in the Red Sea. The report found that “more likely than not,” five civilians were killed on April 6 near the Yemeni capital of Sanaa, 80 were killed on April 17 near Ras Isa Port and another 68 were killed on April 28 near Saada.
The military did not conduct site visits or interviews to make the assessments, but it relied on U.S. intelligence, imagery and public reporting, according to the report.
NBC News and The Washington Post were first to report details on the assessments.
Airwars, an organization that tracks civilian harm in conflicts, reported last year at least 258 civilians may have been killed in Operation Rough Rider. The report from the Pentagon has at least 153, but notes that as of earlier this year, there were 15 other incidents in Yemen the military was assessing in response to reports received through nongovernmental organizations.
The report is also notable for what it does not count. It does not include any of the casualties from the controversial strikes in the Caribbean and Pacific, which numbered about 120 last year and 95 this year.
The Trump administration says the boat strikes — which began in September 2025 — are intended to target drug traffickers from cartels that the administration considers terrorist groups. Some legal experts have said the strikes amount to illegal extrajudicial killings because U.S. forces are prohibited from intentionally targeting civilians, including individuals suspected of criminal activity, unless they meet the legal standard governing the use of military force.
Congress mandated in the 2018 annual defense policy bill that the Pentagon submit reports — known in military parlance as “1057 reports” — on civilian casualties during the preceding year. Nearly 500 civilians had been killed in U.S. military operations in 2017, the first year of required reporting. The number significantly decreased after the withdrawal from Afghanistan, to just one killed in 2023 and two in 2024, but climbed again with last year’s major military operation against the Houthis.
“The U.S. military is steadfastly committed to limiting harm to civilians, and DoW has a strong record of compliance with the law of war,” states a tranche of the opening statement.
Pentagon’s civilian harm office faces budget cuts
This year’s figures on civilian casualties come amid another recently released Pentagon report that paints a portrait of a small office charged with reducing civilian harm during U.S. military operations. The office has sought to preserve and advance its work as it navigates budget and personnel cuts, not only to its own operations but also to the expansive U.S. military program of civilian harm mitigation.
The Civilian Protection Center of Excellence’s annual report to Congress, released in late July, underscored its expanding training programs and partnerships across the Defense Department, while also documenting a year marked by shrinking resources and an uncertain future for the office.
The center said it continued to support military commands through such efforts as hosting collaboration workshops, running war gaming exercises and studying past operations — including Operation Rough Rider, the U.S. air and naval campaign against Houthi targets in Yemen last year. But the report also acknowledged the toll of budget cuts and organizational changes.
Staffing at the center dropped to just nine full-time employees — seven civilians and two U.S. service members — by the end of the 2025 fiscal year, down from a staff of 40 civilian, military and contractor support employees, according to the report. Separate from the center, the Pentagon cut both budgets and staffing across the U.S. military’s civilian harm mitigation program.
Hegseth has said he wants to “untie the hands of our warfighters” and emphasize “maximum lethality, not tepid legality.” In his initial months at the Pentagon, he fired the top military lawyers for the Army, Navy and Air Force, and he previously disparaged military lawyers, or judge advocates general, as “jagoffs.”
On protecting civilians, Hegseth told Congress earlier this year, “the United States military never targets civilians, and puts constructs in place to ensure that [to] the maximum extent possible, we do not harm or hit civilians.”
During Hegseth’s tenure, the Pentagon has sought to eliminate the center of excellence, arguing in documents submitted to Congress that the center duplicates many of the tasks already performed through the Defense Department’s Civilian Harm Mitigation and Response program.
But the Pentagon has also moved to gut not just the center, but the military’s larger civilian harm program, which was created in 2022. In the Trump administration’s 2026 budget request, the Defense Department described the purpose of the cuts to personnel and funding as “disestablishment of the program.” The request proposed reducing personnel funding by over $2 million and mission support by more than $9.5 million, according to Pentagon documents.
U.S. officials, who spoke to CBS News under condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly, said cuts to the center and the larger civilian harm mitigation program amounted to roughly a 90% reduction in personnel since March 2025.
The Civilian Protection Center of Excellence was borne out of an action plan that the Pentagon rolled out in 2022 after it acknowledged several recent botched airstrikes.
“Protecting civilians from harm in connection with military operations is not only a moral imperative, it is also critical to achieving long-term success on the battlefield,” reads the opening introduction of the Civilian Harm Mitigation and Response Action Plan from August 2022.
The plan called for the Pentagon to better prevent harm to civilians during military conflict, with steps like developing standardized data collection, creating dedicated positions for civilian harm mitigation efforts and establishing the center of excellence. The center would coordinate analysis, training and lessons learned across the Defense Department.
The center was codified and signed into law by Congress in the 2023 annual defense policy bill, which also required the Pentagon to publicly release an annual report about the center’s work, like the one published last month.
But the report from the Civilian Protection Center of Excellence arrived just weeks after a Defense Department inspector general report concluded that key elements of the Pentagon’s civilian harm mitigation enterprise had already begun to erode due to cuts and inaction.
Shortly after Hegseth entered the Pentagon, senior officials proposed changes to the center of excellence and the action plan, according to the report. As of April 2026, Hegseth still had not made a decision. In the absence of action, civilian harm mitigation experts left their positions, the Army stopped funding the data management platform and the center of excellence lost large numbers of personnel and leaders.
Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Elbridge Colby told the inspector general a review of the center of excellence was due in January 2026 and a review of the Defense Department’s civilian casualty policy was due by the end of the year. The status of those reviews is unclear.
The Pentagon did not respond to a request for comment.
The Atlantic reported earlier this month that the Pentagon is considering restoring as many as half of the roles that were cut as it grapples with allegations of civilian casualties, in particular the alleged strike on a girls’ school in the opening days of the Iran war that the Iranian government says killed about 170 people.
The Pentagon has yet to release the results of its investigation into that strike, which could become the most significant test of whether the military’s post-Afghanistan civilian harm reforms functioned as intended.
Read the full report on 2025 casualties