Red Sea blast could be by Houthis
Explosion comes after a Houthi missile struck a ship last week
The master of the vessel reported the explosion and said no one was hurt, the British military’s United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations centre said.
An explosion near a ship in the Red Sea yesterday is suspected to have been an attack by Yemen’s Houthi militants, though the blast caused no damage, authorities said.
The master of the vessel reported the explosion and said no one was hurt, the British military’s United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations centre said.
The private security firm Ambrey says the incident may have involved a missile.
The Houthis did not immediately claim the attack, though it takes the rebels several hours to acknowledge their strikes. The blast comes after a Houthi missile struck a commercial ship in the Gulf of Aden last week, killing three of its crew members and forcing survivors to abandon the vessel.
It was the first fatal strike in a campaign of assaults by the Iranian-backed group over Israel’s war on Hamas in the Gaza Strip. The Houthis say the attacks are intended to pressure Israel into stopping the war, but their targets increasingly have little or nothing to do with the conflict.
Other recent Houthi actions include an attack last month on a cargo ship carrying fertiliser, the Rubymar, which later sank after drifting for days, and the downing of an American drone worth tens of millions of dollars.
Al Qaida leader killed
Meanwhile, the leader of Yemen’s branch of Al Qaida is dead, the group announced late Sunday. Khalid Al Batarfi had a $5 million bounty on his head from the US government over leading the Al Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula, through years that saw him imprisoned, freed in a jailbreak, and governing forces in Yemen.