DUBAI, January 26. /TASS/. The Houthis from Yemen's rebel Ansar Allah movement have attacked the Marlin Luanda oil tanker they identified as belonging to the United Kingdom in the Gulf of Aden, the movement’s military spokesperson Yahya Sarea said.
"The Yemeni naval forces conducted an operation in the Gulf of Aden against the British Marlin Luanda oil tanker, which was attacked with anti-ship missiles," he wrote on his X (formerly known as Twitter) account.
According to the Houthi spokesman, the strike caused a fire onboard the ship.
He also warned that the Houthi would continue targeting commercial ship in the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden.
Meanwhile, Ambrey, a UK-based maritime security company, said earlier that an unnamed commercial ship had come under a missile attack some 55 nautical miles southeast of the Yemeni port of Aden. According to the company, a fie broke out onboard the ship.
The United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations, UKMTO, also reported an attack on a ship off the Yemeni coast, providing no further details.
According to Marine Traffic, a maritime analytics provider, the Marshall Islands-flagged Marlin Luanda tanker was on its way from Greece to Singapore. The last time it reported its location was on January 22 when it was in the northern part of the Red Sea. Since then, the vessel was sailing with its transponders off. The online service does not provide data about the ship’s owner, operator or destination.
Following the escalation of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict in the Gaza Strip, the Houthis warned that they would launch strikes on Israeli territory while barring ships associated with the Jewish state from passing through the waters of the Red Sea and the Bab el-Mandeb Strait until Tel Aviv ceased its military operation against Palestinian radical group Hamas in the embattled enclave. Since mid-November, dozens of civilians ships have been attacked by thee Houthi in the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden.
On January 12, US and British aircraft, ships and submarines for the first time attacked targets belonging to the Ansar Allah movement in a number of Yemeni cities, including Sana’a and Hodeidah. The strikes targeted the launch sites of rockets and unmanned aerial vehicles, as well as radar stations belonging to the Houthi rebels.
In the early hours on January 23, the US and UK attacked Houthi facilities in several Yemeni provinces, with their main target being the rebels' underground warehouses and facilities related to missile launches and air surveillance.