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Houthi rebels say ships in the Red Sea and Arabian Sea are their latest maritime targets.
Published On 20 Feb 2024
Yemen’s Houthi rebels say they have targeted what they claim to be an Israeli cargo ship, the MSC Silver, in the Gulf of Aden near the entrance to the Red Sea with a number of missiles.
Houthi military spokesperson Yahya Sarea did not elaborate, but in a statement on Tuesday said the group had also used drones to target a number of United States warships in the Red Sea and Arabian Sea as well as sites in the southern Israeli resort town of Eilat.
However, the British maritime security firm Ambrey said the container ship targeted by the Houthis on Tuesday was Liberia-flagged and headed for Somalia.
“The Houthis characterised the vessel as Israeli. The operator was publicly listed as [in] cooperation with ZIM and regularly called [at] Israeli ports,” the Ambrey advisory note said.
Zim Integrated Shipping Services Ltd, commonly known as ZIM, is a publicly held Israeli international cargo shipping company based in Israel.
The Houthis, who control Yemen’s most populous regions, have attacked vessels with commercial ties to the US, the United Kingdom and Israel.
Despite US-UK strikes on Houthi military sites in Yemen, the Iran-aligned Houthis have promised to continue targeting ships linked to Israel in solidarity with Palestinians until Israeli forces stop their war in Gaza.
“There is no danger to international or European navigation so long as there are no aggressive operations, and thus, there is no need to militarise the Red Sea,” Houthi spokesperson Mohammed Abdul Salam said in a post on X on Tuesday.
“What the world is impatiently waiting for is not the militarisation of the Red Sea, but rather an urgent and comprehensive declaration of a ceasefire in Gaza, for humanitarian reasons that are clear to anyone.”
Two US officials also said on Tuesday that the Houthis had shot down a US military Mq-9 drone near Yemen, the second time they have shot down a US drone in recent months during a near-daily tit-for-tat between the rebels and US forces.
One of the officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said initial information showed the US drone, made by General Atomics, was hit near the Yemeni port city of Hodeidah on Monday. The official said information could change and did not say if the drone was in international airspace.
The second official said the drone was shot down by a Houthi surface-to-air missile fired from near Hodeidah.
The comments by the officials confirm a claim by the Houthis that they had shot down a drone near the city, which lies on the Red Sea.
The Houthis had said on Monday that they had attacked the UK-registered Rubymar cargo vessel in the Gulf of Aden, which was at risk of sinking, raising the stakes in their campaign to disrupt global shipping in solidarity with Palestinians in Gaza.
