U.S. Intercepts Cruise Missile Attack on Its Warship in Red Sea

The U.S. military said its forces shot down a cruise missile fired from Houthi rebel areas toward an American Navy destroyer in the Red Sea, days after the U.S. led air and naval strikes against the Iran-backed militants in Yemen.

The Houthis, who haven’t commented on the Sunday afternoon launch, have vowed to continue their campaign against U.S. and international targets in the region in response to Israel’s actions in Gaza, despite last week’s U.S.-led strikes against dozens of Houthi targets that were designed to prevent further attacks.

The Houthi actions in the Red Sea, initially directed against Israeli-linked vessels, have become increasingly indiscriminate, rattled global markets and upended international shipping routes. As Western powers have retaliated, the Red Sea has become a new flashpoint between the U.S. and Iran-backed allies lined up around the region.

“The American strikes threaten the militarization of the Red Sea,” Abdulmalik Al-Ajri, a member of the Houthi political bureau, told The Wall Street Journal. He warned that the escalation would pose a danger to ships unrelated to the conflict in Israel. The U.S. and its allies say the strikes were intended to reduce the Houthis’ capacity to attack ships transiting the Red Sea.

The Houthis have launched dozens of missile and drone attacks in the Red Sea, mostly against commercial ships, since the Oct. 7 attacks by Hamas and other militants from Gaza that prompted Israel to respond with an air and ground campaign in the Palestinian enclave.

The economic effects of the Houthi attacks are slowly growing and, for now, mainly affecting Europe. Danish shipper A.P. Moller-Maersk has already rerouted its ships and Tesla said Friday it would halt production at its Berlin factory for two weeks as the Red Sea violence has hit its supply chains.

Qatar, which has acted as a mediator for the Houthis in the past, is the latest to pause the use of the Red Sea route for its liquefied-natural-gas exports for fear of being caught in the conflict, according to a Qatari energy official and shipping trackers. Officials in the Qatari Foreign Ministry and at state-run LNG producer Qatar Energy didn’t return requests for comment.

Tanker owners said after the U.S.-led strikes that a number of captains of chartered vessels heading for Europe via the Suez Canal refused to enter the Red Sea, forcing them to sail a lengthy route around Southern Africa. The Singapore ship registry and Intertanko, an industry lobby group, said that the waterway should be avoided.

“The shipping industry involves such a maze of stakeholders it’s difficult to assign a single nationality to a vessel,” said Ami Daniel, chief executive of shipping intelligence provider Windward.

The missile launched toward the USS Laboon on Sunday afternoon was shot down in the vicinity of the coast of Hudaydah by U.S. fighter aircraft, said U.S. Central Command, which oversees U.S. military operations in the Middle East. There were no injuries or damage reported, Centcom said.

The Houthis have said their action will only stop if Israel ends its military campaign in Gaza.

Strikes last week conducted by U.S. and British forces and supported by Australia, Bahrain, Canada and the Netherlands targeted radar and air-defense systems as well as storage and launch sites for the Houthis’ cruise and ballistic missiles, according to Centcom. The Houthis have used their arsenal, with the assistance of Iranian intelligence, to launch successive attacks on Red Sea shipping lanes.

Write to Benoit Faucon at [email protected] and Costas Paris at [email protected]