- The Houthis hit a US-owned container vessel with an anti-ship ballistic missile on Monday.
- It's the latest attack by the Iran-backed rebels since the US and UK hit them with strikes.
The Houthis fired multiple missiles into key waterways off the coast of Yemen, hitting a US-owned vessel on Monday, as the Iran-backed rebels continue to target key shipping lanes.
The attack comes just days after the US and UK conducted a widespread series of intense strikes on the Houthis, who have lobbed dozens of missiles and drones at commercial ships over the past few months. The two countries said in the aftermath that they expected the coordinated action would deliver a serious blow to the rebels. The strikes, however, did not prevent the Houthis from retaliating almost immediately.
On Sunday, the Houthis fired an anti-ship cruise missile toward the USS Laboon, a destroyer, as it was operating in the southern Red Sea, according to a statement from US Central Command (CENTCOM). The missile was shot down near the coast of Yemen by American fighter jets.
On Monday, not even 24 hours later, US forces detected an anti-ship ballistic missile that was fired toward shipping lanes in the southern Red Sea, although it failed in flight and landed in Yemen, CENTCOM wrote in a post on social media.
Shortly after that, the Houthis fired another anti-ship ballistic missile that hit the Gibraltar Eagle, a Marshall Islands-flagged container ship that's owned and operated by the US. The ship continued its journey after reporting no injuries or significant damage, according to CENTCOM.
A Houthi spokesperson later confirmed responsibility for the incident and said the rebels consider any American or British ships in the region to be hostile actors. The spokesperson added that a response to the coordinated US-UK strikes is "coming" and any new military action from the two countries will trigger retaliation.
In the widespread strikes, which occurred early Friday morning local time, the US and UK militaries targeted dozens of Houthi assets across Yemen, including radar stations, weapons storage locations, launch sites, command and control nodes, and production facilities. Western officials said the strikes were launched from airborne, surface, and subsurface platforms — that is, jets, warships, and at least one submarine — and involved more than 100 precision-guided munitions.
But that wasn't the end of it. On Saturday, a US Navy warship fired a Tomahawk missile and hit a Houthi radar site in Yemen as a "follow-on action on a specific military target" associated with the initial round of strikes, CENTCOM said.
It was not immediately clear how much damage the strikes caused, although a senior Biden administration official told reporters that the strikes were conducted with the expectation that they would "degrade in a significant way the Houthis' capability to launch exactly the sorts of attacks that they have conducted over the period of recent weeks."
"The detailed results of the strikes are being assessed, but early indications are that the Houthis' ability to threaten merchant shipping has taken a blow," the UK Ministry of Defense said in a statement, echoing what the unnamed US official said.
The strikes followed repeated warnings from the US and its allies that the Houthis would face serious consequences if they didn't stop their attacks on international shipping, which have turned critical waterways off the coast of Yemen into a dangerous passage for vessels.
The rebels have claimed their actions are a direct result of the Israel-Hamas war, although US officials have dismissed this as their motivation. US officials have accused the rebels of acting indiscriminately and creating a global problem.