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US guided missile cruiser at Bab al-Mandeb
Photo: Mc3 Amber Smalley/dpa
The US military has again attacked Houthi militia targets in Yemen to prevent new attacks on ships in the Red Sea. The target of Friday's attacks were two unmanned watercraft and five militia cruise missiles, the responsible US regional command Centcom announced on Saturday on the X platform, formerly Twitter. The ships and missiles were discovered in Houthi-controlled areas in Yemen and assessed as a direct threat to US Navy ships and merchant vessels in the region, it said.
The Houthis, who are protected by Iran, repeatedly target merchant ships on the Red Sea because of the Gaza war. The militia says it acts in solidarity with the terrorist organization Hamas. It directs its attacks off the Yemeni coast on freighters with alleged ties to Israel.
One of the most important shipping routes for world trade runs along Yemen, through which freighters from the Indian Ocean reach the Mediterranean via the Suez Canal in Egypt. In response to the attacks, the USA and Great Britain carried out several large-scale military strikes against Houthi positions in Yemen.
The Houthis have now publicly buried 17 of their fighters who are said to have been killed in attacks by the US army. The bodies of the killed men were carried to the grave in a procession in the capital Sanaa on Saturday. An official Houthis media channel published the names of the “martyrs” of the “American-British aggression.”
The US Army had already carried out attacks against the Houthis in the past few days:
On
Thursday
, bombardments were reported on positions from which the militia had prepared attacks on merchant ships and US Navy warships.
The Houthis' news agency also reported on
Wednesday
about attacks in the Yemeni province of Hodeida.
On
Tuesday
, the Houthis again attacked British and US merchant ships in the Red Sea.
The German frigate “Hessen” is now on its way to the danger region. The navy ship left on Thursday for a planned EU military operation in the Red Sea to protect merchant shipping there against attacks by the Houthi militia. The warship with around 240 soldiers on board left the German Navy's largest base in Wilhelmshaven on Thursday. Naval inspector Jan Christian Kaack said in Berlin: "This is the most serious deployment of a German naval unit in many decades." He assured: "There is no unit in the German navy that is better prepared, better trained and better equipped for this."
dop/dpa/AFP