On Tuesday, the bulk cargo vessel Sea Champion, flying the Greek flag, docked at the southern Yemeni port of Aden following an incident in the Red Sea. Shipping and military sources indicate that the vessel was targeted in what seems to be an inadvertent missile strike by Houthi militia. A port source and a shipping official said the ship was carrying grain from Argentina to the internationally recognized government in the city of Aden, which is under Houthi control, and suffered only minor damage from a missile that pierced its deck above the waterline and missed its target by a wide margin. The ship had no crew injuries. A Houthi military spokesman claimed two attacks Sunday against vessels in the Bab al-Mandab Strait, which links the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden and handles 12 percent of global maritime traffic. The Pentagon said a US Navy destroyer shot down one of the attackers — an Iran-aligned Houthi drone and suffered a small amount of debris damage.
The spokesman, Brig. Gen. Yahya Saree did not name the target of the second attack, which was against a Malaysian-flagged bulk carrier, the Zografia. A military advisory seen by Reuters warned commercial ships to stay away from the area because of a possible threat and said the ship had been abandoned by its crew.
A second US-flagged ship, the Eagle Bulk Shipping company’s MSC Silver, was also hit by a rocket but escaped without significant damage, according to the US Navy’s Fifth Fleet. The company says the ship had steel products on board when struck and suffered no injuries.
It was not clear what caused the second strike, which occurred about 10:30 p.m. AST/KSA time, about 110 miles (180 km) southeast of Aden, with the US Navy confirming the attack and saying that a US-flagged guided-missile destroyer, the INS Visakhapatnam, came to the aid of the ship.
Shipping risks have escalated due to repeated drone and missile strikes in the Red Sea and Bab al-Mandab Strait by the Iran-aligned Houthis since November, which they say are in solidarity with Palestinians during Israel’s war with Hamas in Gaza. The Houthis’s campaign has disrupted shipping across the Gulf of Aden, which is used by some carriers to bypass the Suez Canal and cut down the distance between Asia and Western markets.
The Houthis, who control most of Yemen’s populated regions, have targeted vessels with commercial ties to the United States, Britain, and Israel, shipping and insurance sources say. The United States and Britain have responded with several strikes on Houthi facilities, but the attacks continue. The United Nations has called for an immediate end to the fighting in the Red Sea and the country’s northern region around Hodeidah, the world’s largest humanitarian aid port. In December, the UN special coordinator for Yemen, Ismail Ould Cheikh Ahmed, urged all sides to do everything they could “to achieve a political solution to the conflict as soon as possible.”