Houthis claim attacks on three ships, including one in

The Yemeni Houthis attacked three ships in the Red Sea, the Mediterranean Sea and the Arabian Sea, the Iran-allied group said on Friday. However, the manager of the ship allegedly attacked in the Mediterranean said there were no signs of such an incident.

The reported attacks are the latest in a months-long campaign by Houthi forces against regional shipping, which the group says is a sign of solidarity with Palestinians fighting Israel in the Gaza war.

Houthis’ military spokesman Yahya Sarea said in a televised address that Houthi forces had attacked the ship Yannis in the Red Sea, the Essex in the Mediterranean Sea and the MSC Alexandra in the Arabian Sea.

The Houthis “fired several missiles at the Essex ship in the Mediterranean Sea while it was violating the ban on entering occupied Palestinian ports,” Sarea added.

He did not provide any information about when the attacks took place.

The US Central Command said on Friday that the Houthis fired two anti-ship ballistic missiles into the Red Sea on May 23, but no injuries or damage were reported.

According to shipping data, the Liberian-flagged liquefied gas tanker Essex was anchored off the coast of the Egyptian port of Alexandria in the Mediterranean Sea on Friday.

The ship is managed by Zodiac Maritime, which is controlled by Israeli magnate Eyal Ofer.

A spokesman for Zodiac Maritime said: “The vessel is safely anchored in Egyptian waters and there are no signs of anything unusual.”

The British maritime security company Ambrey apparently referred to the Essex in a statement, saying that the ship was sailing between Alexandria and Port Said, also in Egypt, and had not called at any Israeli port in recent weeks.

“The tanker was within 15 nautical miles of the coast of Egypt last week. The language used by the Houthis suggests that they did not hit the ship,” Ambrey said.

“While various security sources have assessed that Houthi missiles and drones have sufficient range to reach the Eastern Mediterranean from Yemen, they also believe that coalition and local forces have sufficient air defense systems to counter this planned action,” said a security alert last week from the world’s leading maritime registry, the Marshall Islands.

Earlier this month, the leader of the Yemeni Houthis, Abdul Malik al-Houthi, said the Iran-backed group would attack all ships heading to Israeli ports, not just those in the Red Sea region, which it had previously attempted to attack.

Since November, Iran-aligned Houthi fighters have repeatedly launched drone and missile attacks on ships in the key shipping lanes of the Red Sea, the Bab al-Mandab Strait and the Gulf of Aden to demonstrate their support for the Palestinians in the Gaza war.

This forced shipping companies to divert their cargo to longer and more costly routes around southern Africa and raised fears that the war between Israel and Hamas could spread and destabilize the Middle East.

(Reuters – Reporting by Yomna Ehab, Nayera Abdallah and Mohamed Ghobari and Jonathan Saul; Editing by Alison Williams, William Maclean)