U.S. helicopters sink 3 Houthi boats in Red Sea

U.S. military helicopters came under fire from Iranian-backed Houthi fighters in the Red Sea on Sunday morning and shot back, sinking three Houthi boats and killing those aboard, U.S. Central Command said.

The episode was a significant escalation in the Houthis' attacks in the Red Sea, where they have launched dozens of missile and drone assaults against commercial ships in response to Israel's war against another Iranbacked group, Hamas. It was the first time since the Israel-Hamas war began that the Yemen-based Houthis have been known to directly target U.S. forces, which have been deployed to the region to protect vessels transiting a crucial waterway for global shipping.

The clash occurred after a commercial container ship was attacked by Houthi fighters in small boats and issued a distress call, prompting U.S. Navy helicopters to respond, the U.S. military said.

“In the process of issuing verbal calls to the small boats, the small boats fired upon the U.S. helicopters with crewserved weapons and small arms,” Central Command said in a statement on social media. “The U.S. Navy helicopters returned fire in self-defense, sinking three of the four small boats, and killing the crews.”

In recent months, U.S. forces have launched retaliatory attacks in Syria and Iraq against Iranbacked militias that have targeted U.S. troops, and the Pentagon has acknowledged that militants were killed in at least one of those strikes. But the U.S. military has not struck directly at the Houthis in Yemen, where they control a large swath of the country's north, wary of an escalation that could cause the war in the Gaza Strip to further inflame the Middle East.

In early December, the destroyer USS Carney shot down three drones during a sustained Houthi attack on commercial ships in the Red Sea, the Pentagon said. One of the drones was headed in the direction of the Carney, though it was not clear at the time if the destroyer was the intended target.

The incident Sunday involved a container ship operated by the shipping giant Maersk, which was transiting the southern Red Sea when it came under attack by Houthis, according to statements by Central Command and by Maersk.

The container ship, the Maersk Hangzhou, reported that it had been struck by a missile about 8:30 p.m. Saturday, when it was about 55 nautical miles southwest of Hodeida, Yemen. The crew “observed a flash on the deck,” Maersk said in an emailed statement.

Two American vessels responded to the ship's distress call, and one of them, the USS Gravely, a destroyer, “shot down two anti-ship ballistic missiles fired from Houthi-controlled areas in Yemen toward the ships,” Central Command said on social media.

No injuries were reported, and Maersk said that its vessel had continued traveling north.