DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — A merchant ship traveling through the Gulf of Aden has seen explosions near the ship, officials said Saturday, in what may be the latest attack by Yemen’s Houthi rebels who have sought to target the shipping lane.
The apparent fire by the Houthis comes after this week’s sinking of the ship Tutor, marking what appears to be a new expansion of the Iranian-backed Houthis. Israel-Hamas has attacked ships along a key sea route of the war. In the Gaza Strip.
Meanwhile, US officials have reportedly ordered the USS Dwight D. Eisenhower, the aircraft carrier retaliating against Houthi attacks, to return home.
The captain of the targeted ship late on Friday “saw explosions in the vicinity of the ship,” the British military’s United Kingdom Maritime Operations Center said.
The UKMTO said the “crew are safe and the vessel is on its way to its next port”, without elaborating on whether the vessel sustained any damage.
The Houthis, who have seized Yemen’s capital Sanaa since 2014, did not immediately claim responsibility for the attack. However, it may take hours or even days for the insurgents to acknowledge their attacks.
The Houthis on Friday released footage of one of their drone boats, a “tufan” or “flood,” which they said targeted the teacher.
The Houthis have launched more than 60 attacks targeting specific ships and fired other missiles and drones in their campaign, which has killed a total of four sailors. Since November they have captured one ship and sunk two. A US-led airstrike campaign targeting the Houthis since January killed at least 16 people and wounded 42 others in a series of May 30 attacks, the rebels say.
In March, the Belize-flagged Rubymar, carrying fertilizer, sank for the first time in the Red Sea after taking on water for days following a rebel attack.
The Houthis have said their attacks target ships linked to Israel, the US or Britain. However, many of the ships attacked had little or no connection to the Israel-Hamas war.
Meanwhile, the U.S. Naval Corporation News Service, citing an anonymous official, reports that Eisenhower will return home to Norfolk, Virginia, after being deployed for more than eight months, the Navy’s most intensive deployment since World War II. The report stated that an aircraft carrier operating in the Pacific would replace the Eisenhower.
USS Theodore Roosevelt is the USS aircraft carrier operating in Asia. Roosevelt docked in Busan, South Korea on Saturday amid Seoul’s continued tensions with North Korea.
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