CAIRO (Reuters) – Yemen’s Iran-aligned Houthi militia said on Tuesday they targeted an Israeli cargo ship, the “MSC Silver”, in the Gulf of Aden adjacent to the Red Sea with a number of missiles.
Houthi military spokesman Yahya Sarea did not elaborate, but in a statement said the group had also used drones to target a number of U.S. warships in the Red Sea and Arabian Sea as well as sites in the southern Israeli resort town of Eilat.
The Houthis, who control Yemen’s most populous regions, have attacked vessels with commercial ties to the United States, Britain and Israel, shipping and insurance sources say.
Despite retaliatory Western strikes on Houthi military sites in Yemen, the Iran-aligned Houthis have vowed 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 spokesman 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.”
(Reporting by Mohamed Ghobari; writing by Adam Makary and Muhammad Al Gebaly; editing by Alexandra Hudson and Mark Heinrich)
