Houthis hit oil tanker but US fights with war of words

An oil tanker was on fire off the coast of Yemen after a missile strike claimed by the Houthis late last night.

Multinational firm Trafigura, which has offices in in London, said the safety of crew on the Marlin Luanda, a vessel operated on its behalf, is its “foremost priority”.

Military ships in the region are on the way to provide assistance, it said.

Earlier Yemen’s Houthi rebels launched a missile at a US warship on patrol in the Gulf of Aden, forcing it to shoot down the projectile, the US military has said.

The attack on the destroyer USS Carney marks a further escalation in the biggest confrontation at sea the US has seen in the Middle East in decades.

It represents the first time the Houthis directly targeted a US warship since they began attacking shipping in October, a US official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity as no authorisation had been given to discuss the incident.

That contradicted a statement by the US military’s Central Command, which said the Houthis fired “toward” the USS Carney. As it has in previous strikes, the Pentagon has said it was difficult to determine what exactly the Houthis were trying to hit.

Ever since the Israel-Hamas war broke out, the US 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.

Acknowledging Friday’s assault as a direct attack on a US warship is important, said Brad Bowman, a senior director at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies.

The US military tempering its language, he claimed, while aimed at preventing a wider war, has had the opposite effect – and has further enabled the Houthis.

In yesterday’s attack, an anti-ship ballistic missile came near the USS Carney, an Arleigh-Burke class destroyer that has been involved in US operations to try and stop the Houthi campaign since November, an American spokesperson told reporters.

“The missile was successfully shot down by USS Carney,” said US Central Command. “There were no injuries or damage reported.”

The attack was the latest assault 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 Iranian-backed Houthi rebels did not immediately acknowledge the attack, though they typically take several hours afterward to claim their assaults.

The US and Britain have launched multiple rounds of airstrikes this month, 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.

Since November, the rebels have repeatedly targeted ships in the Red Sea, saying they were avenging Israel’s offensive in Gaza against Hamas.

But they have frequently targeted vessels with tenuous or no clear links to Israel, endangering shipping in what is a key route for global trade between Asia, the Mideast and Europe.

Since the US and UK airstrike campaign began, the rebels now say they’ll target American and British ships.

On Wednesday, two American-flagged ships carrying cargo for the US defence and state departments came under attack by the Houthis, forcing an escorting US warship to shoot down some of the projectiles.

The US Navy’s top Middle East commander told reporters on Monday that the Houthi attacks were the worst that the Americans had experienced since the so-called Tanker War of the 1980s.

That conflict culminated in a one-day naval battle between Washington and Tehran in 1988, and also saw the US Navy accidentally shoot down an Iranian passenger jet, killing 290 people.

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