‘Nothing left to bomb': Yemen's civilians bear brunt of US airstrikes on Houthis

The Guardian

26-05-2025

Late last month, a suspected US airstrike levelled four homes on the fringes of the Yemeni capital, Sana'a, killing at least 11 people. A video posted by an eyewitness shows a frightened man carrying a young child on his back as they run through the darkness, warning people away, before the roar of a jet and the white flash of a blast.
Local people quickly circulated notifications of funerals for the many killed in the airstrike on the outlying Thaqban neighbourhood, listing the whole families that had died in an instant.
This included Ali Yahya Salah Masoud, who one mourner said on social media was killed 'hand in hand with his entire family, including his wife, sons and daughters', alongside pictures from a long-ago celebration showing his daughters with red bows in their hair and his smiling sons in small suit jackets.
Sean Parnell, the chief Pentagon spokesperson, said in late April that a punishing campaign of US airstrikes that began in mid-March had 'hit over 1,000 targets, killing Houthi fighters and leaders … and degrading their capabilities'.
While the US claims to have targeted the Houthis, the intense wave of airstrikes on major cities and sites across Yemen has also claimed dozens of civilian lives, according to human rights groups and the London-based monitoring organisation AirWars, which lists fatalities from three families in the attack on the Thaqban district.
'There's nothing in this world, no matter how precious, that can replace my family,' said a 27-year-old mother of three, who said her parents and sisters were killed in the airstrike. 'I feel like I die a hundred times a day from the grief.'
'We buried eight people from a single family, from a single house,' said a mourner at the funeral procession. 'There's no sign that this was a military target. We're their neighbours … we saw what happened.'
Airwars cites several social media accounts which posted allegations that Yemen's Houthi rebels used the Thaqban neighbourhood, including one Yemeni activist who posted on X that a home there contained a missile launch pad. All the posts were later deleted, and observers suggested that US forces had used the tweets to source information about where to target.
An official with US Central Command (Centcom), which oversees American military operations in Yemen, declined to comment on the airstrike on Thaqban, but said they were 'aware of the claims of civilian casualties related to the US strikes in Yemen, and we take those claims very seriously. We are currently conducting our battle-damage assessment and inquiry into those claims.'
In a statement last month, Centcom also released figures different from Parnell's, saying US forces had struck more than 800 targets, killing 'hundreds of Houthi fighters and numerous Houthi leaders', including senior drone and missile operatives, while also destroying swaths of the group's facilities, air defences, weapons-manufacturing facilities and missiles.
It added: 'These operations have been executed using detailed and comprehensive intelligence ensuring lethal effects against the Houthis while minimising risk to civilians.'
As waves of American airstrikes pounded the Yemeni capital, Mohamed Althaibani watched the walls of his house shake. The bombs that pummelled sites on the outskirts have often hit sites that the US, and before them a coalition led by neighbouring Saudi Arabia, has already struck repeatedly over their decade-long military campaign, he said.
'People here in Yemen are born into nothing, the government has nothing – so why are they bombing?' he asked. 'There is nothing left to bomb. The missiles are worth more than the buildings they're hitting.'
To the 72-year-old naturalised US citizen, the airstrikes were a grim reminder that the country he has lived in for four decades views civilian life in his home country as expendable.
Then early this month, a fresh wave of Israeli strikes targeted the airport and a power station in Sana'a, hitting civilian infrastructure and residential areas.
'Many people have died – and for what? There is nothing to strike here, except people trying to live, looking for food.
'We have nothing. They claimed to bomb the power plant but it wasn't working anyway. We're already relying on generators,' said Althaibani.
Photos from late April showed the mangled wreck of a car and people gathered around a large crater in the Farwah market in Sana'a after just one of the airstrikes, which the Houthis claimed killed 12 people and wounded 34 others.
For people across Yemen, the airstrikes are a deadly addition to a humanitarian crisis that has overwhelmed the country for more than a decade. Civilians across the country have weathered a bloody civil war as Houthi rebels battled and eventually overwhelmed government forces in the capital, followed by a decade-long campaign of airstrikes and a naval blockade from a military coalition spearheaded by Saudi Arabia.
At least 4.5 million people in Yemen are displaced by the fighting, the UN estimates, while 17 million people are in desperate need of food, including 5 million living on the brink of famine. A decision by the Trump administration to slash the US contribution to aid, particularly at the UN, has left humanitarians fearful that the cuts will further endanger civilian lives in Yemen.
Althaibani describes being swarmed by desperate people each time he leaves the house, with most unable to afford food at the local markets, where even basic goods have become increasingly expensive.
'If I buy imported milk, that can be $6-7 (£5); a lot of people can't afford that,' he said. 'Only people with money can afford these kinds of things; the others are just trying to subsist on bread.'
It was the strike on the Farwah market that made Althaibani weigh whether to leave Sana'a and return home to New York following months of pressure from his family to escape the bombings. Although the airport reopened this week after the Israeli strike earlier this month, he fears it could easily be a target again.
'We used to say to one another, 'if God loves you, he will send you to America',' he said, expressing a deep love for the place he has called home, set up businesses and raised a family, but which recently unleashed the deadliest bombing campaign on Yemen in years.
'I feel bad because they bombed my country, but America is my country too,' he said.
Another US strike on the Ras Isa oil terminal on the Red Sea coast in mid-April marked one of the single deadliest since Washington drastically escalated its air campaign in Yemen weeks after Donald Trump took office. The family of a 48-year-old truck driver, Nabil Yahya, said he was killed when the fuel tanker he was driving burst into flames after the airstrike on the port.
'That truck was all he had,' said Nabil's younger brother, Sultan Yahya. 'It was his only source of income.'
The US president abruptly announced earlier this month that the US would halt its campaign of airstrikes, claiming that the Houthis had agreed via Omani mediators to halt their attacks on key Red Sea shipping lanes off Yemen's coast.
'The Houthis have announced to us at least that they just don't want to fight any more … we will honour that,' Trump told reporters at the White House. 'They have capitulated, but more importantly we will take their word that they won't be blowing up ships any more.'
The president's words provided little reassurance to those in Yemen that the agreement with the Houthis would endure, and left many sceptical about how the Israeli bombing campaign could escalate. Israel has struck Yemen repeatedly in the past 18 months, in response to Houthi rocket attacks on Tel Aviv, while the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, threatened further airstrikes on Yemen earlier this month even without US support.
'Israel will defend itself by itself. We are doing this in Yemen, we are doing this in other places, at great distances. We have harshly struck the Houthis in Yemen, and we still have not had the last word,' he said in a speech earlier this week.
Abdullah Sabri, Yemen's ambassador to Syria during the dictatorship of Bashar al-Assad, who was an ally of Iran and the Houthis in Yemen, said US forces had 'largely spared the Houthi leadership and military assets,' and instead accused them of targeting civilians and basic infrastructure.
'Washington is spinning a diplomatic defeat as a success,' he added.
Analysts such as Maysaa Shujaa Aldeen, writing for the European Council on Foreign Relations, agreed. While the intense US air campaign initially appeared successful, she said, it had 'not delivered broader strategic gains: despite the pounding, the Houthis still managed to attack US targets and Israel. Commercial shipping has not meaningfully resumed.
'Moreover, the campaign has allowed the Houthis to tighten their grip domestically and they now celebrate the US stand-down as a sign of victory,' she said.
While Trump halted American military campaign, the US treasury department has continued to impose waves of sanctions, including on Yemeni banks, in an effort to curb funds flowing to the Houthis and 'stop Iran-backed Houthi attacks against commercial shipping in the Red Sea'.
The sanctions on key banks in Sana'a have left many inside Yemen panicking, said Radhya al-Mutawakel, of the human rights organisation Mwatana. 'We don't know if this will eventually affect all banks. Our organisation transferred our money to another bank, but that could be designated at any time,' she said.
'It's not only direct attacks where civilians are killed, injured and civilian infrastructure destroyed, but daily life, especially at an economic level, is under attack,' she said. 'People are just eager to live, they want all of this to stop.'
Murad Ahmed, who works at the port of al-Hudaydah, said the ceasefire agreement between Washington and the Houthis had provided some relief despite fears of future airstrikes. Recent US sanctions also targeted oil tankers delivering fuel to ports including Hudaydah, which Washington claims is under Houthi control, allowing the group to benefit from selling fuel at inflated black market prices.
'After the bombings and fuel blockades, we faced serious crises. Prices were rising to a dangerous point. But two tankers have now been allowed to offload fuel, and conditions are slowly improving,' Ahmed said.
Althaibani said civilians remain caught between the ongoing Israeli bombing campaign, US sanctions and the Houthis, with most unable to do more than shelter in their homes when they hear the sound of bombardments.
'They could target the Houthis if they wanted to, but why are they bombing cities if they don't want to kill civilians?' he said. 'They bombed all over the city and people were scared to flee in case they strike those areas. They decided to die in their homes. There is nothing they can do.'