ICRC denies reports it recovered specific numbers of bodies from Yemen's fronts

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SANAA, Yemen — The International Committee of the Red Cross has denied reports that its teams recovered specific numbers of bodies from combat fronts in Yemen.

The claims and the images circulating with them have no basis in truth and are deliberately misleading, the organisation said.

It said its role is to support the relevant authorities and first responders in recovering the dead and handling remains with dignity.

It does not announce the number of bodies recovered in such operations, or their affiliation, it said.

The committee called on individuals and organisations circulating the claims to check their accuracy, to respect the humanitarian mission and to respect the dignity of the dead and the suffering of their families.

It asked the public to rely on its official channels.

The clarification was carried on Sept. 26 and Sept. 27 by Yemeni outlets including 26 September Net, Yemen Future and Al-Mashhad, and in English by PressBee, which credited the state news agency Saba.

No ICRC spokesperson or delegation official is named in any of those accounts. Yemen Herald found no version of the statement published on the committee’s own website, and no independent confirmation of it has been published.

None of the accounts identifies which reports or which accounts had circulated the figures the committee is rejecting.

The committee has set out its position on the dead in Yemen before. In a statement on Aug. 30, 2023, the head of its delegation in Yemen, Daphnee Maret, said thousands of people had gone missing because of the conflict.

Maret placed them in three groups: fighters killed in action, civilians lost during hostilities whose bodies were never recovered, and detainees unable to contact their families.

In that statement the committee said it provides technical expertise and material support for the search and recovery of the dead from mass graves, unburied sites and the rubble of buildings, and that remains are handled according to internationally accepted standards.

It said it also works to prevent disappearances by monitoring places of detention, supports the authorities in building capacity to manage human remains, and helps reunite family members separated by the fighting.

It described itself as co-chair of the sub-committee on the dead created under the Stockholm Agreement, and said it was ready to act as a neutral intermediary in returning remains between the parties to the conflict.

That sub-committee sits under the agreement the government and the Houthis signed in Stockholm in December 2018, which also covered a prisoner exchange and the fighting around Hodeidah.

Maret also said the families of the missing are themselves victims of the violence, with economic, psychological and legal needs, and that the burden is heavier where the missing person had been the household’s main earner.

The committee keeps contact points for families searching for missing relatives in Sanaa, Aden, Taiz and Hodeidah, according to guidance it publishes for people affected by the conflict.

It says it relies on information provided by the parties to the conflict and by the authorities to establish what happened to individuals, and that the process can take time.

The denial follows a month of fighting on Yemen’s Red Sea coast.

Houthi forces took the port of Mokha on Sept. 10, The Guardian reported. Reuters reported the following day that they had taken Dhubab and reached Perim Island in the Bab al-Mandab strait.

Al Jazeera reported on Sept. 10 that more than 20,000 people had been displaced across Taiz and Hodeidah. The Guardian put the number who had fled at nearly 50,000 two days later.

About 112,000 people were displaced inside Yemen in two weeks across Aden, Hudaydah, Abyan and other governorates, the United Nations said at a briefing in Geneva on Sept. 18.

Of more than 5,000 health service delivery units in Yemen, only 60 were fully functioning before the escalation, Tarik Jasarevic, a World Health Organization spokesman, said at that briefing.

Shabia Mantoo, a spokeswoman for the UN human rights office, urged all parties and those with influence over them to de-escalate, protect civilians and allow humanitarian access.

Alessandra Vellucci, who directs the UN Information Service in Geneva, said 73 UN staff remained arbitrarily detained by the Houthi de facto authorities, some of them since 2021.

Abdusattor Esoev, the International Organization for Migration’s chief of mission in Yemen, said at the same briefing that its resources were very limited and its stocks would be depleted very soon.

In an account of its 2025 work in Yemen published on Feb. 13, the committee said its economic security programmes had reached more than 1.5 million people across the country.

It said more than a hundred detainees were released in January 2025, and that a preliminary agreement reached in December could produce the largest release of its kind since the conflict began.

Yemen was the committee’s fourth-largest operation worldwide that year, it said in the same account.

A livestock campaign it ran vaccinated 4.9 million animals.

It renovated and equipped a medical clinic at Saada prison in mid-2025.

Yemen Monitor reported in November 2025 that armed Houthi fighters entered the committee’s compound in Sanaa and questioned staff. The committee did not confirm those details and said it was engaging with the authorities to clarify the circumstances.