The retaliation by Ansarallah Al-Houthi’s Movement to recent American and British attacks on the country was quick and came in two separate operations.
The military spokesperson for the Yemeni group, Brigadier General Yahya Saree, said in a statement that Yemeni forces have targeted an American ship in the Gulf of Aden.
Saree said that Ansarallah now officially considers all American and British ships in the Red Sea military targets.
A subtitled version of the statement issued on Monday, Jan 15 by General Brigadier Yahya Saree, the military spokesman for the Ansarallah Al-Houthi’s Movement.
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The announcement is considered a major development, considering that previously, Ansarallah Houthis only targeted ships that were bound for Israeli ports, as a way of putting pressure on Israel to end its genocidal war on Gaza.
The United States and the British government, who support the Israeli war, carried out several attacks at Yemeni targets starting on January 12, resulting in the killing and wounding of Yemenis.
Washington said that their attacks, which involved air and missile strikes, were meant as a ‘message’ to the Houthis.
According to today’s reports, however, the message was not received. Earlier on Monday, the US Central Command claimed that it had downed an anti-ship missile in the Red Sea, targeting the US destroyer USS-Laboon.
The Americans say that the missile was downed by a fighter jet near the coast of Hudaydah, in western Yemen. Later, two British maritime security agencies said that a Houthi missile had hit a US- owned ship near Aden.
The US military said that they could not defend the ship, which flew a Marshall Islands flag, because it did not send a distress signal.
The escalation in the Red Sea places Washington and its allies before a serious, and possibly unprecedented, challenge. A major war on Ansarallah is unlikely to alter the group’s political outlook, especially since the group is already in a state of readiness, thus its military capabilities are not exposed to American missiles.
Additionally, the US-drafted UN Security Council Resolution 2722, in addition to the US-led Red Sea coalition Prosperity Guardian, were supposedly designed to secure the Red Sea.
But the expansion of the Houthi operations, in response to the US-UK attacks, is likely to turn the Red Sea into a war zone, complicating an already difficult situation for the global economy.
Many shipping companies have already canceled their movement through the Red Sea, others have diverted away from the Bab Al-Mandab area, and more are likely to join them in coming days.
(The Palestine Chronicle)
