Houthis say strikes on Red Sea shipping will continue

Attacks on ships headed to Israel will continue, the chief negotiator for Yemen’s Houthis said on Monday.

Reuters quotes Mohammed Abdulsalam as saying: “Attacks to prevent Israeli ships or those heading to the ports of the occupied Palestine will continue.”

He added the group’s position has not changed since US-led air strikes on Yemen, and that the group’s demands are still for an end of the Israeli offensive in Gaza, and allowing humanitarian aid to the north and south of the strip.

US fighter aircraft shot down an anti-ship cruise missile fired from a Houthi-controlled area of Yemen at one of its warships in the Red Sea, the US military said on Sunday night.

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The missile was fired towards the USS Laboon which was operating in the Southern Red Sea, US Central Command said in a statement, in what appears to be the first such attempt on a US destroyer.

No injuries or damage were reported, Central Command said.

The incident follows warnings from Houthis and their allies of possible further military action in the aftermath of Friday’s US-UK bombing of rebel-held areas in Yemen. Initial briefings from the US suggested that only about a quarter of the Houthis’ missile and drone attack capability had been destroyed in that attack.

A Houthi supporter said on Sunday that the group’s attacks on merchant shipping travelling the busy waterway south of the Suez Canal would continue “because they are at war with Israel”.

Hussain al-Bukhaiti said that if the US and UK continued to bomb Yemen, Houthi forces would attack western warships “maybe using hundreds of drones and missiles,” which would represent a significant escalation. Not all the ships targeted since the Hamas attack on Israel on October 7th have had Israeli links..

The leader of Hizbullah, a Houthi ally, said all ships in the southern Red Sea were now in danger. Hassan Nasrallah said the US bombing on Friday “will harm the security of all maritime navigation” because “the sea has become a theatre of fighting, missiles, drones and warships”.

Recent events in and around Yemen come as Israel’s war with Hamas passed the 100-day mark and at a time when tensions in the Middle East have been at their highest in decades.

Israel’s prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, said late on Saturday that his country would pursue its war against Hamas relentlessly and would not be halted by the international court of justice, which has begun hearing a case brought by South Africa accusing it of genocide against Palestinians in Gaza.

“No one will stop us, not The Hague, not the axis of evil and not anyone else,” Mr Netanyahu said in televised remarks, referring to Iran and its allied militias, the Houthis and Hizbullah.

Nearly 24,000 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza so far, according to the territory’s Hamas-controlled health ministry, of whom 70 per cent are women and children. An estimated 1.9 million people out of a prewar population of 2.3 million have been displaced, fleeing intense fighting and bombing across the strip.

Concerns are intensifying about the risks of wider escalation. Two recent Israeli assassinations of Hizbullah commanders in Lebanon have increased fears of an outbreak of war in the north of the country while the security situation in the southern Red Sea has rapidly deteriorated.

A fleet of US and British warships were embroiled a Houthi drone and missile attack last Tuesday. Eighteen drones and three missiles were shot down, prompting the US president, Joe Biden, to respond by bombing Houthi targets in the small hours of Friday.

British and US warships and jets fired 150 missiles at what the Pentagon described as military targets in 28 locations, killing five people and injuring six. The bombing was intended to halt a spate of 26 Houthi attacks since mid-October by targeted radar stations and missile and drone launch sites. – Guardian