Yemen's Ansar Allah (Houthi) said today they attacked a U.S. Navy mobile base in the Gulf of Aden. The attack targeted the USS Lewis B. Puller, a ship that serves as a floating landing base.
Houthi military spokesperson Brig. Gen. Yahya Saree said in a statement the Yemeni armed forces fired a missile at the Puller in the Gulf of Aden. He vowed that the attacks will continue "until the aggression is stopped, and the siege is lifted on the people of Palestine in the Gaza Strip."
The USS Lewis Puller had been earlier stationed in the Arabian Sea as part of American efforts to curtail Houthi attacks on shipping lanes in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden.
However, a U.S. defense official, speaking anonymously, denied the attack, saying there had been no attack on the Puller.
The Houthi group has launched over 30 attacks on ships in the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden since November of last year.
While the group has kept firing missiles and drones toward the American and British ships, it has intensified deploying forces on several frontlines. Local sources said today Houthi reinforcements have moved from Sanaa towards Marib and Shabwah provinces amid rising tensions in the Red Sea.
The sources also said that Houthi reinforcements passed from Nihm to the Al-Alam front, east of Al-Jawf.
Moreover, additional Houthi reinforcements had been sent through Qaniya in Al-Bayda province, heading towards the southern Marib and Bayhan fronts.
The group is planning to launch an attack on areas in Marib and Shabwah provinces to take over the oil and gas pipeline that connects Safer in Marib to Balhaf in Shabwah, a military source told Sheba Intelligence last week. This Houthi move is a new threat to the peace process in Yemen.
The sources pointed out that the Houthi group has mobilized crowds of fighters in the Afar area of Al-Bayda, and the fighters moved toward the Wadi Mansam area near the Baihan district of Shabwah.
On Saturday, Yemen's internationally recognized government said the U.S. and British strikes on the Houthis are not enough, calling for U.S. and Saudi support to "eliminate" the Houthi ability to stage attacks on Red Sea shipping.
Defensive operations are not the solution," Rashad al-Alimi, head of the Saudi-backed Presidential Leadership Council (PLC), told a briefing with journalists in the Saudi capital, Riyadh.
Al-Alimi said, "The solution is to eliminate the Houthis' military capabilities." He said he wanted American and Saudi support for ground operations against the Houthis and that Yemeni forces would need to be "partners" in those operations.
U.S. and British forces on January 12 fired their first joint strikes aimed at reducing the Houthis' ability to target vessels transiting the key Red Sea trade routes. However, shipping lanes in the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden remain unsafe for ships. The continued escalations in the Red Sea and Yemeni frontlines will likely plunge the country into a fresh cycle of war, political observers say.
