Houthi rebels fire missile at US destroyer, ratchet up tensions
JERUSALEM — Yemen’s Houthi rebels launched a missile Friday at a U.S. warship patrolling the Gulf of Aden, forcing it to shoot down, and another missile struck a British vessel as the attacks continue on maritime traffic.
The attack on the destroyer USS Carney marked a further escalation in the biggest confrontation at sea the Navy has seen in the Middle East in decades, as Houthi missile fire set another commercial vessel ablaze Friday night.
The Carney attack represents the first time the Houthis directly targeted a U.S. warship since the rebels began their assaults on shipping in October, a U.S. official said on condition of anonymity. That contradicted a statement by the U.S. military’s Central Command, which said the Houthis fired “toward” the Carney.
As it has in previous strikes, the Pentagon said it was difficult to determine what the Houthis were trying to hit.
Ever since the IsraelHamas war broke out, the U.S. has tried to temper its descriptions of the strikes targeting its bases and warships to try to prevent the conflict from becoming a wider regional war.
For weeks the U.S. and allies also held off on striking Houthi weapons sites in Yemen, but they are now taking regular action, often destroying launch sites that are armed but have not fired and are deemed an imminent threat.
Acknowledging Friday’s assault as a direct attack on a U.S. warship is important, said Brad Bowman, a senior director at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies.
“They’re now finally calling a spade a spade, and saying that, yeah, they’re trying to attack our forces, they’re trying to kill us,” he said.
In Friday’s attack, an anti-ship ballistic missile came near the USS Carney, an Arleigh-Burke class destroyer that’s been involved in American operations to try to stop the Houthi campaign since November, Central Command said.
“The missile was successfully shot down by USS Carney,” it said. “There were no injuries or damage reported.”
Later Friday, the British military’s United Kingdom Maritime Operations, which oversees Mideast waterways, acknowledged that a vessel had been struck by a missile and was on fire in the Gulf of Aden. A U.S. military official confirmed that the vessel was struck by an anti-ship ballistic missile fired from Houthi-controlled Yemen, damaging the ship.
The official said there were no known injuries from the attack.
The attacks were the latest assaults by the rebels in their campaign against ships traveling through the Red Sea and surrounding waters, which has disrupted global trade amid Israel’s war on Hamas in the Gaza Strip.
The U.S. and Britain have launched multiple rounds of airstrikes since the Houthi attacks began targeting Houthi missile depots and launcher sites in Yemen, a country that’s been wracked by conflict since the rebels seized the capital, Sanaa, in 2014.