The British Maritime Security Agency (UKMTO) had previously said there had been a drone attack on a ship in the Gulf of Aden. “A fire broke out on board and was extinguished.” The ship and its crew are “safe,” the authority said.
According to the security company Ambrey, it was a ship flying the Marshall Islands flag. The freighter was attacked 60 nautical miles southeast of the Yemeni port city of Aden.
In view of the Houthi attacks on ships in the Red Sea, the USA announced on Wednesday that it would put the Iran-backed militia back on an official terror list. “The Houthis must be held accountable for their actions,” said US Secretary of State Antony Blinken. But this should not come at the expense of the Yemeni civilian population. The classification of the militia, which controls large parts of Yemen, will reportedly come into force in 30 days.
U.S. President Joe Biden’s national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, said that if the Houthis stop their attacks in the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden, “the United States will immediately re-evaluate this classification.” The US government removed the Houthi militia from a list of terrorist organizations at the beginning of 2021 shortly after Biden took office in order not to complicate international crisis aid for the civil war country of Yemen.
Immediately after being reclassified as a terrorist organization, the Houthi rebels announced on Wednesday that they wanted to continue attacking ships. “We will not stop targeting Israeli ships or ships heading to ports in occupied Palestine,” Houthi spokesman Mohammed Abdelsalam told Qatari television channel Al Jazeera. It’s about “supporting the Palestinian people.”
The Houthi rebels have carried out numerous drone and rocket attacks on ships since the war between Israel and the Palestinian Islamist organization Hamas began on October 7th. The Shiite militia sees itself as part of the self-proclaimed “Axis of Resistance” directed against Israel, which includes Hamas and the Shiite militia Hezbollah in Lebanon. In response to the attacks on ships, the United States and Britain repeatedly attacked Houthi positions in Yemen.
British Foreign Secretary David Cameron called on Iran on Wednesday to stop supplying weapons to the Houthi rebels. Rather, Tehran must use its influence over the militia “to stop Houthi attacks in the Red Sea,” Cameron wrote on Wednesday in the short message service X, formerly Twitter.
