SANAA: Yemen’s Houthi rebels claimed another attack on a US ship early Friday, after the United States launched fresh strikes on rebel targets over their aggression towards vessels in and around the Red Sea.
While the Iran-backed rebels maintained they had struck the commercial vessel in the Gulf of Aden, the US military later said the group’s missiles had missed their mark. The Houthis said in a statement posted to social media that their “naval forces... carried out a targeting operation against an American ship” — identified as the Chem Ranger — “with several appropriate naval missiles, resulting in direct hits”.
It did not give a time nor other details for the latest attack in international shipping lanes.
The US military’s Central Command, which is responsible for the Middle East, said the Houthis “launched two anti-ship ballistic missiles at M/V Chem Ranger, a Marshall Island-flagged, US-Owned, Greek-operated tanker” on Thursday night.
“The crew observed the missiles impact the water near the ship. There were no reported injuries or damage to the ship,” the command said on social media platform X.
Continued Houthi aggression against vessels in and around the Red Sea has led to strikes in Yemen by US and British forces, with the United States reporting its latest attack on Houthi targets on Thursday.
The specialist website Marine Traffic said the Chem Ranger was a chemical tanker sailing from Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, to Kuwait.
British maritime risk management company Ambrey said a Marshallese chemical tanker sailing the same route had reported an incident southeast of the Yemeni port of Aden.
“An Indian warship responded to the event,” it said.
The British maritime security agency UKMTO, without identifying the vessel, also reported an incident in the same area, adding in a bulletin that the “vessel and crew are safe, vessel proceeding to next port”. The Houthis have launched numerous attacks on ships in the waters around Yemen since the war in Gaza erupted on October 7 with Hamas’s bloody attack on Israel.
The Houthi statement said the rebels were acting against “the oppression of the Palestinian people in the Gaza Strip and within the response to the American-British aggression against our country”.
Separately, a senior Houthi official promised safe passage through the Red Sea for Russian and Chinese vessels.
Some shipping firms are avoiding the waters around Yemen but Mohammed al-Bukhaiti insisted it was safe so long as vessels were not linked to Israel.
“As for all other countries, including Russia and China, their shipping in the region is not threatened,” Bukhaiti said in an interview with Russian outlet Izvestia published on Friday.
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