The Houthis have continued their attacks in the Red Sea despite U.S.-U.K. strikes late last week.
U.K. Maritime Trade Operations said on Monday it received a report of a vessel getting hit by a missile about 109 miles from Yemen. The M/V Gibraltar Eagle, a Marshall Islands-flagged U.S.-owned and operated container ship, was hit but did not report any injuries or significant damage, according to U.S. Central Command. CENTCOM also noted that they tracked an anti-ballistic missile fired from Yemen, but it failed and impacted on land in-country.
A day earlier, U.S. fighter aircraft shot down an anti-ship cruise missile fired toward the USS Laboon in the Southern Red Sea, according to U.S. Central Command.
The Yemen-based, Iranian-supported Houthis have carried out roughly 30 attacks in the Red Sea, mainly targeting commercial vessels transiting the waterways near Yemen. These attacks largely started in mid-November.
U.S. and U.K. forces struck more than 60 Houthi targets in Yemen on Thursday night. They targeted the Houthis’ infrastructure used to carry out the attacks, including munitions depots, launching systems, air defense radar systems, and command and control nodes. These strikes occurred in two waves.
The U.S. also carried out a strike a day later on a Houthi radar site.
These strikes capped off weeks of warnings from the U.S. and other global leaders.
A senior U.S. military official told reporters on Friday that they expected the Houthis would respond.
“My guess is that the Houthis are trying to figure things out on the ground and trying to determine what capabilities still exist for them,” Director of the Joint Staff Douglas Sims said. “But I would expect that, you know, their rhetoric has been pretty strong and pretty high. I would expect that they will attempt some sort of retaliation.”
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Houthi leaders have vowed to continue their attacks, which they say are in response to Israel’s war in Gaza, while the U.S. and U.K. have reiterated their willingness to conduct further retaliatory strikes.
The Houthis’ attacks threatened the global shipping industry as major companies have halted routing vessels through the Red Sea and ultimately through the Suez Canal. Instead, those companies have opted to have their vessels sail around the southern tip of South Africa, navigating around the African continent, which extends those transports.
