The Pentagon's Yemen casualty review and the Caribbean boat strikes show two separate fronts where military force has moved ahead of legal and humanitarian scrutiny.
Geopolitics··Morning
Yemen's toll, reviewed a year later
An unclassified Pentagon review submitted to Congress found that US strikes in Yemen killed 153 civilians and wounded 243 in 2025. According to the review as reported by Al Jazeera, all of those casualties occurred in three attacks in April; the corresponding figures for 2024 were 2 killed and 2 wounded. The heaviest toll came at the Ras Isa fuel port, where the review counted 80 civilians killed and 171 wounded. It judged civilian harm more likely than not, yet found condolence payments inappropriate, and the report said no reason was given for that decision. A Pentagon official speaking to the Associated Press on condition of anonymity said the Ras Isa attack was not intended to harm Yemen's population and that US forces sought to eliminate a fuel source for the Houthis. That stated purpose does not alter the review's casualty finding. Central Command was still examining 15 other incidents involving reported civilian harm as of February, making the released figures an ongoing retrospective assessment rather than a closed account.[1]
A legal dispute in the Caribbean
In a separate Caribbean campaign, US forces have struck vessels they say were smuggling drugs since September 2025. Al Jazeera reported that US Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth, speaking in Panama, urged members of the Shield of the Americas coalition to reject the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court. Hegseth alleged that an unlawful attempt was being planned to establish the court's authority over US and partner military personnel, and he maintained that the campaign was fully lawful under the law of armed conflict. Colombia became member number 19 of the coalition on the same day. In contrast, a July report by the Washington Office on Latin America counted at least 221 deaths in the strikes. Rights monitors say fishermen, passengers and trafficking victims may be among those killed, while rights groups and legal experts describe the attacks as extrajudicial killings and contrary to international law. The International Criminal Court has announced no investigation amid these competing claims. The development therefore concerns an American effort to align partners politically against a possible international review, not a judgment already reached by the court.[2]
Two campaigns, one scrutiny gap
Yemen and the Caribbean are not one military campaign: their objectives, geographies and legal disputes differ. The two reports nevertheless expose a common distance between the use of force and the timing of public scrutiny. In Yemen, an official institution counted civilian casualties after the attacks through a retrospective review submitted to Congress; other incidents remain under examination, and the reason for rejecting condolence payments was not disclosed. In the Caribbean, the death count comes from a civil society report, uncertainty over who was killed persists, and the defence secretary is urging partners to oppose jurisdiction before any court investigation has been announced. The sources do not support a single legal conclusion across the two fronts. They do document a pattern in which military rationales are stated promptly while questions about civilian harm and authority surface later through contested channels. That distinction is the useful one for readers: an officially asserted purpose is not the same as an independent assessment of casualties or a determination of legal responsibility. Each requires its own evidence and process, and neither report says that those processes have reached a final conclusion.[1], [2]
