The US military’s annual report has been criticized for excluding non-combatant deaths from its official tally
The Pentagon was accused of whitewashing US Army crimes after publishing its annual estimate of civilian casualties in 2025.
The report, submitted to Congress late Monday and obtained by US news outlets, contains numbers that are far lower than estimates by independent outlets.
The Pentagon concluded that US military operations killed 153 civilians and injured 243 last year. All of the cited casualties in 2025 stemmed from Washington’s bombing campaign against the Houthis in Yemen, while another 15 remain under review.
However, independent monitors have reported figures significantly higher. The Airwars group has estimated that at least 258 civilians may have been killed during the Yemen campaign, while the Yemen Data Project has put the toll at 238 dead and 467 injured. The Pentagon recorded no civilian casualties from US military operations in the Western Hemisphere, despite dozens of strikes on alleged drug-trafficking boats in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific beginning in September of 2025 – a point of particular criticism.
Two US government officials cited anonymously by The Intercept rejected the Pentagon’s assessment, with one describing the report as a “total whitewash” and another calling it “a f***ing joke.”
More than 200 people have been killed since Washington launched its campaign against suspected drug-smuggling vessels. Around 120 died in 2025 alone, but none were classified as civilians in the Pentagon report.
The Trump administration has described those targeted as “narco-terrorists” linked to cartels it considers terrorist organizations.
Washington has generally not released public evidence establishing that those killed aboard individual vessels were cartel members or that the boats were carrying narcotics. UN experts, legal specialists, and several Latin American governments have questioned the legal basis for the boat strikes, with critics describing them as extrajudicial killings.
The Pentagon’s latest casualty estimates mark a sharp increase from the two civilian deaths acknowledged in 2024. The figures are expected to be even higher for 2026 due to the ongoing US-Israeli war on Iran.
Iran’s authorities have already reported more than 3,300 deaths since the conflict began in February, nearly half of them civilians. Among them are 200 children, including more than 120 schoolgirls killed in a US strike on an elementary school in Minab on the first day of the war.
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