Yemen's Houthis Warn European Union: 'Do not Play With Fire' in Red Sea
The Yemeni Houthi group on Tuesday threatened to respond to any attempt to protect the Israeli ships in the Red Sea, following an EU announcement of a naval mission to protect vessels in the Red Sea. "We say to the Europeans, don't play with fire. You don't need to back the US in protecting the occupying [Israeli] entity," said Mohammed Ali Al-Houthi, a member of the Houthis Supreme Political Council, in a statement. "Any idiocy you commit will affect your ships and navigation (in the Red Sea), you are warned." He added, "Your presence increases the militarization of the Red Sea... and will affect the chain of food supplies to the markets in your countries." The Houthi group has launched numerous attacks on ships in the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden, saying their attacks will stop when the Israeli war on Gaza ceases.
Egypt's Interior Ministry has revealed the circumstances surrounding the killing of a prominent Yemeni military official, as reported by the Yemeni embassy in Cairo. The ministry announced the arrest of suspects. This comes after the Yemeni embassy announced on Sunday that Brigadier Hassan Bin Jalal Al-Obaidi, director of the Military Industrialization Department at the Yemeni Ministry of Defense, was murdered in his apartment in Giza. The Egyptian Interior Ministry indicated that the investigations and gathering of information led to identifying the perpetrators who confessed to committing. According to the ministry, two of the perpetrators knew the victim and plotted to rob him with the help of others. They took advantage of the victim hosting them at his house on the evening of Friday the 16th when he committed the crime.
The US is investigating after an unmanned US drone crashed near Al-Hudaydah in Yemen early Monday morning, two US officials told CNN. It's unclear if the Air Force MQ-9 Reaper, an unmanned drone primarily used for intelligence collection, simply crashed or was shot down. A spokesperson for the Iran-backed Houthi forces said in a statement posted on X that the drone was shot down "with a suitable missile." It was not the first time the group shot down a US drone. They previously shot down an MQ-9 Reaper in November off the coast of Yemen.
Egyptian President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi has said that revenues from the Suez Canal have "decreased by 40 to 50 percent" so far this year due to attacks on shipping by Yemen's Houthis, according to Agence France Presse. The canal is one of Egypt's main sources of foreign currency, which is gripped by a severe financial crisis. Since November, the Iran-backed Houthis have launched numerous attacks on vessels in the Gulf of Aden and Red Sea, which the group says are aimed at ships with links to Israel in solidarity with the Palestinians in the war-torn Gaza Strip.
