WASHINGTON: The US military has said that it had destroyed four Houthi drones and two aerial ones over the Red Sea off Yemen, western media reported.
The Iran-backed Houthis have launched scores of missiles and drones at commercial ships in the Red Sea since November, describing the assaults as being in support of Palestinian people during the Hamas-Israel war in the Gaza Strip.
The US and its allies, particularly the UK, have responded with an increased naval presence to protect shipping in the vital waterway and with retaliatory attacks on Houthi targets.
According to the US Central Command (CENTCOM), its forces had “destroyed four Iranian-backed Houthi uncrewed surface ships in the Red Sea and two uncrewed aerial systems over the Red Sea” in the last 24 hours.
CENTCOM stated that the day before that it had also destroyed “one ground control station and one command and control node” in a Houthi areas.
This week, a merchant ship whose hull was breached in an earlier Houthi strike, the M/V Tutor, was believed to have sunk in the Red Sea following its crew was evacuated, a maritime security agency run by the British navy said. A Filipino sailor aboard the ship was killed in the strike. A Sri Lankan crew member on another ship, was seriously wounded in a separate strike, and the ship had to be abandoned.
In a statement, US State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller denounced those strikes in a statement and said the US would “continue to take action to secure freedom of navigation and commercial shipping.
The spokesperson called on the Houthis “to free all detainees, including the UN, non-governmental organization and diplomatic staff they arrested earlier in June.”
The Houthis earlier in June arrested a number of people they claimed were part of a US-Israeli spy network, saying that those held worked under “the cover of international organizations and UN agencies.”
