Three Pakistanis are believed to be among six people killed on Tuesday, as three separate ships came under attack in the Red Sea and Gulf of Oman, ratcheting up tensions in the world’s most critical energy trading corridor.
Yemen’s coastguard said Houthi strikes on a cargo vessel identified as the Tihamah killed four sailors and two rescue personnel deployed to evacuate the ship. The initial strike on the Tanzania-flagged vessel “caused a fire to break out aboard the vessel and inflicted extensive damage, in addition to causing deaths and injuries among its crew, including three Pakistani nationals and one Indonesian national killed,” the coastguard said in a statement. A second strike then hit the vessel as rescue workers were carrying out the evacuation mission. “The attack struck the site of the rescue operation and resulted in deaths and injuries among the forces participating in the response operation,” the coastguard added, saying 10 people were injured across the two strikes.
In a separate incident Tuesday night, Yemen’s Saba news agency reported that Houthi forces attacked a Saudi ship carrying military equipment in the Bab el-Mandeb Strait, though Riyadh has not confirmed the incident. A Houthi-linked media outlet later reported that the group’s armed forces had targeted a ship in Bab al-Mandeb it said was carrying Saudi military equipment, though there has been no official Houthi statement, nor any comment from Pakistan’s Foreign Office on the reported Pakistani casualties.
The strikes are the latest in a series of deadly attacks on shipping in and around the Red Sea’s entrance since the Houthis announced a naval blockade of Saudi Arabia last month.
US Forces Strike Panama-Flagged Vessel
Separately, the Panama-flagged container ship Vela Nova was struck by a missile off Pakistan while sailing into the Gulf of Oman, maritime security sources told Reuters. The Wall Street Journal reported the vessel was attacked by a US helicopter, which fired a Hellfire missile at the ship’s rudder after it attempted to evade a US blockade targeting Iran-linked shipping in the region.
US Central Command later confirmed it had fired missiles into the engine room of the Panama-flagged cargo ship after it attempted to break the American blockade of Iran’s ports. According to Centcom, a US Navy MH-60 helicopter fired on and disabled the Vela Nova after its civilian crew ignored repeated warnings from American forces. This marked the 12th vessel struck by US forces since the blockade was first announced in April, and the third since it was reimposed on July 14.
Charlie Brown, senior advisor at United Against Nuclear Iran, a US advocacy group that tracks Iran-related tanker traffic using ship and satellite monitoring, said the vessel had recently made port calls in Mumbai and Port Klang, Malaysia, locations where Iran-linked ships have also been spotted. “The reported US disabling and stopping of the Panama-flagged Vela Nova near the blockade line in the Gulf of Oman, after its recent Mumbai port call alongside these vessels, underscores the heightened scrutiny now being applied to Iran-related shipping,” he said.
