Houthi attacks target ships they accuse of being linked to Israel (archive).
Dubai:
Yemen’s Iran-backed Houthi rebels said Saturday they had attacked a merchant ship in the Gulf of Aden, while a multinational naval force said two missiles exploded near a Liberian-flagged vessel.
“The Yemeni armed forces carried out a military operation targeting the ship (GROTON) in the Gulf of Aden,” Houthi spokesman Yahya Saree said in a televised statement.
He said the ship was hit and that it was the second time it had been attacked after a similar incident on August 3.
Yemeni rebels have launched a campaign against international shipping traffic crossing the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden in a show of solidarity with the Palestinians amid the war between Israel and Hamas in the Gaza Strip.
Earlier Saturday, the Joint Maritime Information Center (JMIC), run by a Western naval coalition, reported that the Groton was targeted by two ballistic missiles while it was 130 nautical miles east of Aden.
The UK Maritime Trade Operations Agency (UKMTO), run by the Royal Navy, said the captain reported that all crew were safe and the Groton was “heading for the next port of call”.
The Houthi attacks, targeting ships they accuse of being linked to Israel, have disrupted traffic in a maritime zone vital to global trade.
Meanwhile, the US Central Command said on Saturday that US forces destroyed a Houthi drone and an unmanned surface vessel in rebel-held areas of Yemen in the past 24 hours.
“These systems have been determined to pose a clear and imminent threat to U.S. and coalition forces,” CENTCOM said in a statement on X.
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