Yemen's Houthi rebels fired on a ship in the Red Sea on Friday, a US official said, a day after a similar attack in the strategic maritime area.
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“We know that something fired from a Houthi-controlled area in Yemen hit a damaged ship and a fire was reported,” a US military official told AFP.
Britain's maritime safety agency UKMTO also reported that a ship was hit by “an unknown object” and started a fire, with no casualties.
According to the Ambrey secret service, it is a container ship flying the Liberian flag and owned by the German Hapag-Lloyd AG.
“There was an attack on one of our ships,” a company spokesman confirmed to AFP.
He said the ship was traveling from the Greek port of Piraeus to Singapore. According to the same source, there were no injuries and the ship continued its journey to its destination.
According to Ambrey, the German company has branches in the Israeli ports of Ashdod, Haifa and Tel Aviv.
The Iran-aligned Houthi rebels had warned in response to the war between Israel and the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas in the Gaza Strip that they would attack any ship sailing off the coast of Yemen with ties to Israel.
On Thursday, the rebels said they had carried out a “military operation against a container ship, the Maersk Gibraltar,” bound for Israel “by targeting it with a drone.”
However, an American official stated that the missile missed its target and fell into the water.