Three dead after the attack Huthi on the merchant ship True Confidence

Three crew members were killed yesterday (06.03.2024) in the Gulf of Aden, when it was hit by a missile launched by Yemen, according to the U.S. Army, in the rebel’s first deadly attack against international navigation off the poorest country in the Arab peninsula. The Huthi rebels, adjacent to Iran, have since mid-November launched attacks on merchant ships in the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden, sea routes of major importance to world trade. They say they are targeting ships according to them associated with Israel and its allies, especially the US and Britain, in a sign of support for the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, a enclave bombarded and besieged by the Israeli army since October 7. Yesterday about 10:30 (Greece time), an anti-shipcraft ballistic missile was launched from territory controlled by the Huthi in Yemen against True Confidence, a bulk cargo ship “under the flag of Barbados, Liberian ownership”, reported the mixed command of the US armed forces responsible for the Middle East region (CENTCOM, “central administration”. “The rocket hit the ship and the (…) crew mentioned three dead, at least four injured, three of whom are in critical condition, and major damage,” CENTCOM clarified via X (of former Twitter). Through social networking websites, the military representative of the Huthi, Yahia Sari, noted for his part that the True Confidence was hit by “missiles” after his crew defied “warning messages”. Earlier yesterday, naval security services spoke of a cargo ship attacked and damaged off Aden, in southern Yemen, a country where war has been raging over the last decade. The British naval security agency UKMTO noted through X that the crew had to leave the ship, which is now ungovernable. “The Huthi killed innocent civilians,” he denounced an American official provided he was not named. British Foreign Minister David Cameron pointed out through X that this attack caused him “fright” while the British embassy in Yemen considered that the bloody incident was “sad” and “unavoidable consequence” of the Huthi attacks against international navigation. According to UKMTO, the merchant ship received a message via radio “from an entity presented as Yemen’s warship and ordered it to change course”. British naval security company Ambrey reported that the truck belonged to an American company. But the American official objected that it was a ship of “liverian interests”. UKMTO referred to an operation of “community forces” on board. The US formed in December a multinational naval force deployed off Yemen, to protect merchant ships from the attacks of the Ansar Allah movement (“Supporters of God”), best known by the surname of the family of its founders and leaders, Huthi. After yesterday’s murderous attack, a spokesman for American diplomacy has announced that Washington will continue to ensure that the Huthi are “accounted for”. The actions of the rebels, which control almost all of northern Yemen, forced many large shipping companies to suspend their ships’ routes in the strategically important region, from which they passed before the war from 12% to 15% of world trade. According to the International Monetary Fund, container transport through the Red Sea was reduced by almost 30% annually. After all, yesterday around 19:14 (Sanaa time; 18:14 hour of Greece), the US armed forces destroyed two drones of the Huthi unmanned vehicles in Yemen in “legal defence” as “they raised an immediate threat to the US Navy merchant ships and ships in the region”, CENTCOM announced today. Earlier, the U.S. Army reported that the Huthi launched five anti-shipcraft ballistic missiles off Yemen within two days, the two of which achieved their targets — True Confidence and MSC Sky II — and one was shot down. In February, the Yemeni rebels struck a cargo ship carrying chemical fertilizers, Rubymar. The vessel sank, raising a serious risk to the environment and the movement of ships in the Red Sea, according to CENTCOM.