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The Houthis shared a video of an alleged drone attack on a crude oil tanker in the Red Sea.
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A spokesman for the Yemeni armed forces said the ship had violated the entry ban.
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The Iran-backed rebel group has become increasingly adept at attacking commercial ships, experts told BI.
Yemen’s Houthi rebel group shared a video it said showed one of its naval drones attacking an oil tanker in the Red Sea.
In an X after On Tuesday, Ameen Hayyan, the director of the Yemeni Armed Forces Spokesperson’s Office, said it had attacked the lion of Chios on Monday.
The Yemeni Military Media, or MMY, also published the video on its website. websiteand said it showed the MT Chios Lion being shot at by a drone.
Hayyan said the ship was hit because the company that owned the vessel had violated the decision to ban access to the “ports of occupied Palestine”.
Footage of the alleged drone attack at sea shows a ship approaching the front of the Chios Lion and exploding on impact.
United States Central Command, or CENTCOM, reported about the attack on Monday, which said the Houthis attacked the Liberian-flagged crude oil tanker, owned by the Marshall Islands and operated by Greece, with an unmanned surface vessel in the Red Sea, causing damage to the ship.
According to the report, the Houthis also carried out multiple attacks on the MT Bentley I, a Panamanian-flagged, Israeli-owned and Monaco-operated tanker, using one USV, two small boats and an anti-ship missile.
It was reported that no damage or injuries were caused to the vessel.
The Houthis have used naval drones in a series of recent attacks about commercial shipping in the Red Sea.
The Houthis see their campaign as a response to the war between Israel and Hamas, but they are also trying to position themselves as a key player in Iran’s proxy network.
The Iran-backed group scored its first hit with a naval drone in June, striking the M/V Tutor, a Liberian-flagged, Greek-owned bulk carrier, CENTCOM reported at the time.
Since then, it has stepped up its attacks and deployed one or more naval drones almost each day last weekCENTCOM said its forces had destroyed all the drones.
Between October and April, the Houthis carried out at least 53 attacks on commercial vessels, the U.S. Department of Transportation and Maritime Administration reported. reported in april.
And between December and March, Houthis attacks damaged at least 19 commercial vessels, a June 13 report said. report published by the Defense Intelligence Agency.
Experts told BI last month that the increase in successful attacks shows the Houthis are learning lessons from their months-long campaign of attacks on the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden sea lanes, and that Iran, their main military and financial backer, continues to support them.
“With every Houthis attack, the Houthis are likely learning something about what works and what doesn’t,” Brian Carter, team leader of the Salafi-Jihadism team and an analyst with the American Enterprise Institute’s Critical Threats Project, told BI.
“If you think about the way a military organization operates, they certainly learn lessons from the different attack strategies that they use,” he added.
Following Monday’s attacks, Yahya Sare’e, a spokesman for the Yemeni armed forces, said in a rack that the operations will not stop “until the aggression stops and the blockade on the Palestinian people in Gaza is lifted.”
Read the original article at Business insider
