A strike on a cargo vessel killed at least two people near the Bab al-Mandeb Strait off the coast of southern Yemen, British maritime security company Vanguard reported Tuesday, in the latest incident in the contested waterway.
“Two crew members, one Pakistani and one Indonesian national, were killed, while four others, comprising three Pakistani and one Indonesian national, were injured,” the agency added.
“The Yemeni Navy subsequently deployed to assist the vessel and came under fire, resulting in one additional casualty.”
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Earlier, a Yemeni coast guard source in Mokha said the ship near the strait at the mouth of the Red Sea had been struck by the Iran-backed Houthi rebels, killing three members of the crew.
“We managed to rescue the rest of the crew,” the source added.
Another source confirmed the incident, saying the ship had also been struck by a second projectile during the rescue operation, but that source did not provide the number of casualties.
Earlier, the United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations (UKMTO) said a cargo vessel was hit by a projectile near the Bab al-Mandeb Strait off the coast of southern Yemen, causing an unspecified number of casualties but did not provide additional details.
The incident comes after a years-long truce in Yemen’s civil war between the Houthis and the Saudi-backed, internationally recognised government collapsed last month as fighting flared between Iran and the United States.
The breakdown of the UN-backed 2022 accord came as the Houthis announced a maritime blockade of Saudi Arabia, hitting Saudi tankers in the Red Sea and the kingdom’s oil infrastructure, in parallel with Iran’s blockade of the Strait of Hormuz.
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