Red Sea, Houthi missile against a US destroyer: “Crucial corridor”

Very high tension in the Middle East. The Houthis fired a cruise missile at an American destroyer in the southern Red Sea, bringing it down. The United States Central Command (Centcom) reported this in a statement on X. They explained that the missile was shot down near the port city of Hodeidah in Yemen. No casualties or damage were reported. Houthi spokesman Mohammed Abdulsalam described the action of the “enemy” planes as a clear violation of Yemen’s national sovereignty. Meanwhile, the Israel Defense Forces raided a Hamas command center and destroyed a weapons depot in Khan Younis, in the south of the Gaza Strip. Troops seized assault rifles, pistols, grenades, RPGs and diving equipment belonging to Hamas naval forces. This is what we learned from an IDF note.

Yemen’s Houthi rebels fired an anti-ship cruise missile at an American destroyer in the Red Sea on Sunday, but an American fighter jet shot it down. This is the latest attack to disrupt global shipping amid Israel’s war with Hamas in the Gaza Strip. The attack marks the first recognized attack by the Houthis since the United States and allied nations began targeting the rebels on Friday following weeks of attacks on ships in the Red Sea. The Houthis attacked that crucial corridor linking energy and cargo shipments from Asia and the Middle East through the Suez Canal to Europe during the war between Israel and Hamas, attacks that threaten to escalate that conflict into a regional conflagration.

The Houthis, an Iranian-allied Shiite rebel group that captured Yemen’s capital in 2014, did not immediately acknowledge the attack. It was not immediately clear whether the United States would retaliate for the latest attack, although President Joe Biden said he “will not hesitate to take additional steps to protect our people and the free flow of international commerce as necessary.”