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President Donald Trump<\/span> has imperiled civilians across the globe in an unprecedented fashion, outpacing his record of civilian harm during his first term in just the first 15 months of his second, according to experts. The spike in civilian casualties comes as Trump wages wars across the world from Africa to South America and as Secretary of War Pete Hegseth repeatedly brushed off questions by members of Congress on Wednesday about civilian casualties, the U.S. military\u2019s adherence to the laws of war, and the Pentagon\u2019s coordinated campaign to erode civilian harm mitigation efforts.<\/p>\n Trump has embroiled the U.S. in more than 20 military interventions<\/a>, armed conflicts, and wars during his five-plus years in the White House, including a furious blitz during his second term. In March, for example, the United States\u00a0made war on three continents over three days<\/a>, conducting attacks in Africa, Asia, and South America. During that span, the U.S. also struck a civilian boat in the Pacific Ocean.<\/p>\n On Wednesday, Hegseth repeatedly dismissed congressional concerns about civilian harm and respect for the laws of war in testimony before the House Armed Services Committee. \u201cThe Department of War fights to win,\u201d Hegseth replied<\/a> when asked if he stood by his statement that the U.S. would afford enemies \u201cno quarter\u201d \u2014 a war crime.<\/p>\n \u201cSecretary Hegseth has presided over an expansion in U.S. military operations that has caused devastating civilian harm globally, from Yemen, Iran, and Somalia to extrajudicial killings in the Caribbean and Pacific,\u201d said Annie Shiel, U.S. director at the Center for Civilians in Conflict.\u00a0\u201cThis is against the backdrop of a serious reduction in the United States\u2019 capacity and will to prevent civilian harm, including statements from administration officials threatening civilian infrastructure and decrying \u2018stupid rules of engagement,\u2019 and the slashing of U.S. military offices and staff tasked with preventing civilian harm.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n The U.S. has killed more than 2,000 civilians across the world during Trump\u2019s second term from Latin America to Africa to the Middle East. \u201cThis is unprecedented in terms of the sheer number of theaters where harm to civilians has been reported within such a short space of time,\u201d Megan Karlshoej-Pedersen, a policy specialist with Airwars, a U.K.-based organization that tracks<\/a> civilian harm<\/a> across the world, told The Intercept, referencing attacks in the Caribbean Sea, the Pacific Ocean, Iran, Nigeria, Somalia, Syria, Venezuela, and Yemen.<\/p>\n \u201cThis is unprecedented in terms of the sheer number of theaters where harm to civilians has been reported within such a short space of time.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/figure>\n \u201cEven excluding Iran, we saw that at least 381 civilians were killed by the Trump administration so far, with harm recorded across seven different theaters,\u201d Karlshoej-Pedersen, who is also the co-founder of the Civilian Protection Monitor, explained. \u201cEven if the Trump administration is only responsible for a proportion of those deaths, it looks as if the first year-plus of this Trump administration has been even more deadly for civilians than his whole first term,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n Adding in the 1,700 civilians killed in Iran, according to\u00a0the Human Rights Activists News Agency<\/a>, pushes the death toll \u2014 and the overall threat to civilians \u2014 to a historic level.<\/p>\n Other counts of civilian casualties in Iran push the death toll even higher. \u201cU.S.\u2013Israeli airstrikes have killed at least 2,362 civilians, including 383 children, and injured over 32,314 civilians, according to official figures,\u201d Raha Bahreini, a regional researcher with Amnesty International\u2019s Iran Team told The Intercept and other journalists during a press briefing. This includes an attack on the Shajarah Tayyebeh elementary school that killed at least 175 people, most of them children.<\/p>\n The preliminary findings of a U.S. military\u00a0investigation<\/a> revealed by The Intercept and other outlets determined that the United States conducted the attack on the elementary school in Minab, contradicting\u00a0assertions<\/a>\u00a0by Trump that Iran struck the school.<\/p>\n \u201cThe girls\u2019 school that got hit in the first days of this war, there is absolutely no question at this point what happened. We made a mistake,\u201d said Rep. Adam Smith, D-Wash., the top Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee, on Wednesday.\u00a0\u201cWe identified this target based on earlier charts. And yet, two months after it happened, we refused to say anything about it, giving the world the impression that we just don\u2019t care.\u201d<\/p>\n The Pentagon has deflected questions on the Minab attack for almost two months. \u201cThis incident is currently under investigation,\u201d Hegseth\u2019s office told The Intercept on Wednesday, while the war secretary said the same<\/a> to members of Congress, refusing to answer questions about the attack.<\/p>\n \u201cU.S. authorities must ensure that the investigation they announced into the unlawful strike on Minab school\u00a0is impartial, independent and transparent,\u201d said Bahreini, adding that America \u201cmust also repudiate all threats to commit war crimes and other crimes under international law and commit publicly to full respect for international humanitarian law, particularly the prohibition of directing attacks at civilians and civilian objects.\u201d<\/p>\n Earlier this month, President Donald Trump\u00a0threatened to commit genocide in Iran<\/a>, ahead of warnings of a wave of attacks on civilian infrastructure. After backing off, Trump lobbed new threats on Truth Social on Wednesday. \u201cIran can\u2019t get their act together,\u201d Trump\u00a0wrote<\/a>, above an AI-generated image of himself, donning sunglasses and carrying an automatic rifle, with explosions going off in the background. The caption of the image reads, \u201cNo more Mr. Nice Guy!\u201d<\/p>\n During his testimony on Wednesday, Hegseth lobbed his own bellicose threats. \u201cThe days in which these narco-terrorists \u2014 Designated Terrorist Organizations \u2014 operated freely in our hemisphere are over,\u201d he said. \u201cWe are tracking them. We are killing them.\u201d Under Operation Southern Spear,\u00a0the U.S. military has conducted 55 attacks on so-called drug boats<\/a> in the Caribbean and Eastern Pacific Ocean, destroying 56 vessels and killing more than 185 civilians since last September. The latest strike<\/a>, on April 26 in the Pacific, killed three people. The Trump administration claims its victims<\/a> are members of at least one of\u00a024 or more cartels and criminal gangs\u00a0with whom it claims to be at war but\u00a0refuses to name<\/a>.<\/p>\n The casualties in Yemen include an\u00a0attack on an immigrant detention center last year, killing and injuring dozens of Ethiopian civilians<\/a>, according to an investigation by Amnesty International. \u201cThe Trump administration\u2019s Yemen campaign, and this attack in particular, should have set off alarm bells for anyone invested in how the U.S. military operates, and the amount of care or disdain it shows for civilian life,\u201d said Kristine Beckerle, Amnesty\u2019s deputy regional director for the Middle East and North Africa. \u201cOne year on, not only has there been no discernible progress towards justice and reparation, but we\u2019re still lacking basic information about what happened in the Yemen attack, why it happened and what steps if any the U.S. military has taken to address it.\u201d<\/p>\n When it comes to the Trump administration\u2019s neglect for civilian harm, experts say Yemen was the canary in the coal mine. Airwars tracked reports of at least\u00a0224 civilians in Yemen killed<\/a>\u00a0by U.S. airstrikes during the Trump administration\u2019s campaign of air and naval strikes \u2014 codenamed Operation Rough Rider \u2014 against Yemen\u2019s Houthi government in the spring of 2025.\u00a0This nearly doubled the civilian casualty toll in Yemen from U.S. attacks since 2002, meaning that almost as many civilians were reportedly killed in\u00a052 days\u00a0as the previous\u00a023 years\u00a0of airstrikes and commando raids. The\u00a0Yemen Data Project<\/a>\u00a0put the death toll at 238 civilians, at a minimum, and another 467 civilians injured.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n\n