US confirmed attacks on merchant ships in Red Sea

Two attacks by Yemen’s Houthi rebels targeted ships in the Red Sea on Monday as a new U.S. aircraft carrier approached the region to provide security for the key international trade route that has been under assault since the Israel-Hamas war erupted nine months ago, AP reports. Three small Houthi vessels, two of which were crewed and another uncrewed, attacked the Panama-flagged and Israeli-owned MT Bently I off the coast of Al Hudaydah, Yemen, according to British and American authorities. The “reported unmanned small craft collided with the vessel twice and the 2 manned small craft fired at the vessel,” the British military’s United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations center reported. ”The vessel conducted self-protection measures, after 15 minutes the small craft aborted the attack.” The captain later reported three separate waves of missile attacks that exploded in close proximity to the vessel. Later on Monday, in a separate incident off the same coast, the MT Chios Lion, a Liberian-flagged and Marshall Islands-owned oil tanker, was attacked by an uncrewed Houthi aerial vehicle, which “impacted on the port side causing some damage and light smoke,” the UKMTO said.