Yemen’s Houthi rebels on Monday hit a US-owned cargo vessel with a missile, the US military said, heightening fears for the volatile region after repeated attacks on shipping triggered US and British strikes.
After the Western strikes against scores of rebel targets on Friday last week, the Houthis said they would not be deterred, and declared that US and British interests were “legitimate targets.”
The Marshall Islands-flagged Gibraltar Eagle suffered a fire on board, but no casualties and remained seaworthy, the US Central Command said.
Photo: EPA-EFE
“The ship has reported no injuries or significant damage and is continuing its journey,” said US Central Command, which directs US military operations in the region.
Houthi military spokesman Yahya Saree later said the rebels “carried out a military operation targeting an American ship” in the Gulf of Aden using “a certain number of appropriate naval missiles.”
A Houthi military and a Yemeni government source said that the insurgents fired three missiles.
An anti-ship ballistic missile launched earlier toward shipping lanes in the southern Red Sea failed in flight and crashed on land, US Central Command said.
The incident in the Gulf of Aden, south of the Red Sea, came a day after a Houthi cruise missile targeting a US destroyer was shot down by US warplanes.
Attacks by and against the Houthis, part of the “axis of resistance” of Iran-aligned groups, have raised concerns about violence spreading in the region from the war in Gaza.
The Houthis say their attacks on Red Sea shipping are in solidarity with Gaza, where Iran-backed Hamas militants have been at war with Israel for more than three months.
About 12 percent of global trade normally passes through the Bab al-Mandeb Strait, the Red Sea’s entrance between southwest Yemen and Djibouti, but the rebel attacks have caused much shipping to be diverted thousands of kilometers around Africa.
The US Department of Transportation on Monday recommended that US-linked commercial vessels do not enter the southern Red Sea, warning of “a high degree of risk” from “potential retaliatory attacks.”
In Monday’s attack, the UK Maritime Trade Operations security agency, run by Britain’s Royal Navy, reported a “vessel hit from above by a missile.”
Ambrey, a British maritime risk company, “assessed the attack to have targeted US interests in response to US military strikes,” adding that the vessel was “assessed to not be Israel-affiliated.”
“The impact reportedly caused a fire in a hold. The bulker reportedly remained seaworthy, and no injuries were reported,” Ambrey said in a report.
The ship was transiting the International Recommended Transit Corridor, a passage of the Gulf of Aden that is patrolled for pirates, when it was struck, Ambrey added.
Mohammed Albasha, senior Middle East analyst at the US-based Navanti Group consultancy, said the attack in the Gulf of Aden could signal a change in strategy by the Houthis.
“With the US Navy and Royal Navy warships directing their firepower primarily to the Red Sea, I expect a potential shift, where the Houthis redirect their attention to vessels in the Gulf of Aden and Arabian Sea,” he said.
British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak on Monday told lawmakers in London that an initial assessment showed “all 13 planned targets were destroyed” last week.
Buildings at a drone and cruise missile base, and an airfield, as well as a cruise missile launcher, were struck, he said.
Swedish campaigner Greta Thunberg was deported from Israel yesterday, the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs said, the day after the Israeli navy prevented her and a group of fellow pro-Palestinian activists from sailing to Gaza. Thunberg, 22, was put on a flight to France, the ministry said, adding that she would travel on to Sweden from there. Three other people who had been aboard the charity vessel also agreed to immediate repatriation. Eight other crew members are contesting their deportation order, Israeli rights group Adalah, which advised them, said in a statement. They are being held at a detention center ahead of a
A Chinese scientist was arrested while arriving in the US at Detroit airport, the second case in days involving the alleged smuggling of biological material, authorities said on Monday. The scientist is accused of shipping biological material months ago to staff at a laboratory at the University of Michigan. The FBI, in a court filing, described it as material related to certain worms and requires a government permit. “The guidelines for importing biological materials into the US for research purposes are stringent, but clear, and actions like this undermine the legitimate work of other visiting scholars,” said John Nowak, who leads field
NUCLEAR WARNING: Elites are carelessly fomenting fear and tensions between nuclear powers, perhaps because they have access to shelters, Tulsi Gabbard said After a trip to Hiroshima, US Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard on Tuesday warned that “warmongers” were pushing the world to the brink of nuclear war. Gabbard did not specify her concerns. Gabbard posted on social media a video of grisly footage from the world’s first nuclear attack and of her staring reflectively at the Hiroshima Peace Memorial. On Aug. 6, 1945, the US obliterated Hiroshima, killing 140,000 people in the explosion and by the end of the year from the uranium bomb’s effects. Three days later, a US plane dropped a plutonium bomb on Nagasaki, leaving abut 74,000 people dead by the
Former Nicaraguan president Violeta Chamorro, who brought peace to Nicaragua after years of war and was the first woman elected president in the Americas, died on Saturday at the age of 95, her family said. Chamorro, who ruled the poor Central American country from 1990 to 1997, “died in peace, surrounded by the affection and love of her children,” said a statement issued by her four children. As president, Chamorro ended a civil war that had raged for much of the 1980s as US-backed rebels known as the “Contras” fought the leftist Sandinista government. That conflict made Nicaragua one of
RSS