The Houthis said Tuesday they had targeted a Saudi oil tanker in the Red Sea with ballistic missiles, accusing the ship of having “violated the naval blockade” that Iran-backed Yemeni rebels say they have imposed on the kingdom.
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The military spokesperson for the Houthi rebels, Yahya Saree, indicated that they had “carried out a military operation against the Saudi oil tanker NCC GHAZAL for violating the maritime navigation ban (…), using several ballistic missiles, forcing it to turn around,” according to a statement published on social networks.
The MarineTraffic website, owned by maritime tracking company Kpler, identifies the NCC GHAZAL as a Saudi-flagged tanker, whose last known position was the port of Yanbu, the terminal of a major oil pipeline on the Saudi coast in the Red Sea.
The conflict between Iran and the United States has recently expanded to a front that has remained relatively calm since 2022, between the Houthis and Saudi Arabia, which militarily supports the Yemeni government opposed to the rebels.
Hostilities resumed between the two camps on July 13.
Since then, the Riyadh-led coalition has carried out strikes against Houthi military installations, after the rebels announced a naval blockade of the kingdom’s western ports and attacks on infrastructure transporting oil from the Gulf coast to Yanbu.
The Red Sea has become a strategic export route for Saudi Arabia, the world’s largest crude exporter, making it possible to circumvent disruptions to navigation in the Strait of Hormuz imposed by Iran, on the other side of the peninsula.
Later in the evening, the Saudi Defense Ministry said that “several” drones coming from Iraq had been intercepted and destroyed.
According to ministry spokesperson Turki al-Maliki, they were “trying to target oil installations” in the east of the kingdom and were fired upon by “terrorist militias linked to Iran”.
Riyadh had already reported similar attacks on Monday, calling on Iraq to prevent its territory from being used to launch operations against it. If the Iraqi government had announced the opening of an investigation, the “Islamic Resistance in Iraq”, which brings together pro-Iranian armed groups, had denied being behind any attack against Saudi Arabia.
