US Navy helicopters sank three boats of Yemen’s Houthi rebels, which had attacked a container ship in the Red Sea, the army announced on Sunday (December 31).
After Houthi fire targeted American helicopters, the latter “retaliated in self-defense, sinking three of the four small ships, and killing the crews”, said the American military command in the Middle East, Centcom. In a communicatedhe specifies that the fourth boat had “flee the area”.
The US Navy, Centcom added, was responding to a request for assistance from Maersk-Hangzhou, a container ship flying the flag of Singapore, owned and operated by Denmark. THE Maersk-Hangzhou had reported being attacked for the second time in twenty-four hours while sailing in the Red Sea.
Multinational naval force
The ship had previously been targeted by two ballistic missiles launched from Houthi-controlled Yemeni territory, which the US military had shot down. Just after the American announcement, the Danish company Maersk announced that it was suspending the passage of its ships for forty-eight hours through the Bab Al-Mandab Strait, in the Red Sea.
Since the start of the conflict between Israel and Hamas following the deadly attack carried out on October 7 in Israel by the Palestinian Islamist movement, the Houthis have repeatedly targeted ships using the Red Sea sea route, in attacks they say are intended to support Palestinians in Gaza.
These endanger the transit route through which up to 12% of world trade goods are transported, which prompted the United States to set up, at the beginning of the month, a multinational naval force responsible for protecting ships in the Red Sea.