Yemen’s Houthis on Sunday said they had fired ballistic missiles at a container ship in the Gulf of Aden, at the entrance to the Red Sea, after the British navy said a projectile had hit a commercial vessel in the area.
Houthi military spokesman Yahya Sarea said in a statement quoted by the Efe news agency that the Shiite movement fired “several ballistic missiles” at the Liberian-flagged container ship Groton in the same area of the Gulf of Aden where a shell struck a cargo ship on Saturday, causing no serious damage to the vessel.
The ship was targeted as it was heading to an Israeli port, a Houthi spokesman said, declaring that they will not stop operations against any ship linked to the Jewish state until the Israeli offensive on the Gaza Strip ends.
On Saturday, the Royal Navy’s Commercial Marine Operations Command (UKMTO) said the attack had not resulted in a fire, water ingress or oil leak and that the ship had continued on its way.
It is the first operation launched by Yemen’s Houthis against commercial shipping in nearly two weeks of calm, and comes at a time of heightened tension in the Middle East over the expected response of Iran and Hezbollah to Israel’s killing of the Lebanese group’s top commander and Hamas political leader.
On the other hand, Houthi military spokesman Yahya Sarea said the Houthis managed to shoot down a US MQ-9 attack drone with a surface-to-air missile as it flew over Saada province in northwestern Yemen. It was the seventh drone intercepted by the armed movement since the start of hostilities with the US.
The Houthis thus resumed their operations against commercial shipping, which were interrupted two weeks ago following Israel’s large-scale bombing of Yemen’s Al-Hodeidah port in retaliation for a Houthi drone attack that killed a civilian in Tel Aviv.