Yemen airstrikes – live: Red Sea ship fires warning shots after mystery vessel spotted

The United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations (UKMTO) organization early on Tuesday received a report of a small craft circling a vessel in the Red Sea about 57 nautical miles northwest of Eritrea’s Assab.

Vessel and crew were reported safe and are proceeding to their next port after security personnel on the ship “fired warning shots and small craft departed,” UKMTO said in an advisory note.

Yemen‘s Iranian-backed Houthi militants have stepped up attacks on commercial vessels in the Red Sea in protest against Israel’s war in Gaza. Various shipping lines have suspended operations, instead taking the longer journey around Africa.

The Houthi movement will expand its targets in the Red Sea region to include U.S. ships, an official from the Iran-allied group said on Monday, as it vowed to keep up attacks after U.S. and British strikes on its sites in Yemen.

The Islamist group claims it began striking a narrow strip of sea between Yemen and east Africa, which is a key international trade route, in a bid to end Israel’s air and ground offensive against Hamas.

In retaliation, Britain and the US launched air strikes across Yemen against Houthi forces. President Joe Biden called the strikes a “direct response” to an onslaught of attacks on Red Sea ships which “jeopardised trade, and threatened freedom of navigation”.

Mr Sunak said the action was “necessary and proportionate”.

US and British forces launched airstrikes against dozens of targets across Yemen on January 11 in retaliation for months of attacks by the country’s Houthi movement on commercial and military vessels in the Red Sea.

Those attacks, launched by the Iran-backed group in response to Israel’s war in Gaza, have wrought havoc on international shipping and drawn the US and its allies into a regional conflict.

The Pentagon said 60 targets were hit using more than 150 precision-guided munitions.

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here are many difficult questions left to answer over the Middle East’s latest hotspot, warns Kim Sengupta.

The Yemeni Houthi movement will expand its targets to include US ships, an official from the Iran-allied group said on Monday.

“The ship doesn’t necessarily have to be heading to Israel for us to target it; it is enough for it to be American,” Nasruldeen Amer, a spokesperson for the Houthis, told Al Jazeera.

“The United States is on the verge of losing its maritime security.”

Mr Amer also said British and American ships had become “legitimate targets” due to the strikes launched by the two countries on Yemen last week.

Attacks on ships since October by the Houthis, who say they are acting in solidarity with Palestinians, have hit commerce and alarmed major powers in a regional escalation of Israel’s more than three-month war with Hamas militants in Gaza.

The international Islamist political group Hizb ut-Tahrir should be banned as a terrorist organisation, the Home Secretary said, as he branded it “antisemitic” and warned it “promotes and encourages terrorism”.

James Cleverly’s proposal will be debated in Parliament this week and, if approved, the ban would come into force on Friday making Hizb ut-Tahrir the 80th organisation to be proscribed in the UK.

Founded in 1953, Hizb ut-Tahrir is a pan-Islamic fundamentalist group which has been banned in several Arab and Asian countries, including China, as well as in Germany. Austria banned symbols of the group in 2021.

With headquarters in Lebanon, the group also operates in at least 32 countries including the UK, United States, Canada and Australia, with a “long-term goal of establishing a Caliphate ruled under Islamic law”, the Home Office said.

Mr Cleverly said: “Hizb ut-Tahrir is an antisemitic organisation that actively promotes and encourages terrorism, including praising and celebrating the appalling October 7 attacks.

“Proscribing this terrorist group will ensure that anyone who belongs to and invites supports for them will face consequences. It will curb Hizb ut-Tahrir’s ability to operate as it currently does.”

The group had described Hamas as “heroes” – which “constitutes promoting and encouraging terrorism” – and has a “history of praising and celebrating attacks against Israel and attacks against Jews more widely”, the Home Office said.

Houthi rebels said they would expand their targets to include US and British ships as an anti-ship ballistic missile struck a US container ship about 100 miles off the Gulf of Aden, the US military confirmed.

The attack on the Gibraltar Eagle, later claimed by the Houthis, further escalates tensions gripping the Red Sea after American-led strikes on the rebels.

British and American ships had become “legitimate targets”, Nasruldeen Amer, a spokesman for the Houthis, told Al Jazeera on Monday evening.

“The ship doesn’t necessarily have to be heading to Israel for us to target it, it is enough for it to be American,” said Mr Amer.

“The United States is on the verge of losing its maritime security.”

The Houthis have previously said they would only target Israeli ships or those en route to Israel.

The United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations (UKMTO) organisation has advised vessels to transit with caution after a vessel reported being encircled in the Red Sea earlier today.

A small craft circled a vessel in the Red Sea about 57 nautical miles northwest of Eritrea’s Assab, forcing the ship to fire warning shots.

The vessel and crew were reported safe and are proceeding to their next port after security personnel on the ship “fired warning shots and small craft departed,” UKMTO said in an advisory note.

The shadow cabinet is more deeply divided than it appears. Labour is still subject to less media scrutiny than the Conservatives, despite the widespread assumption that Keir Starmer will become prime minister this year.

Most Labour MPs are also more disciplined than most Tory MPs because they can feel election victory within their grasp, whereas the Tories are either fed up or have given up, and so are happier to be rude about each other in private and in public.

As ever in politics, Labour’s divisions are a mixture of the personal and the ideological, and foreign policy is one of the hidden fractures threatening the foundations of an incoming government.

United Nations’ aid chief Martin Griffiths said that US-led strikes in Yemen are a “serious consequence” of Israel’s war in Gaza.

Mr Griffths said he is not blaming any side but it is disappointing to see the prospect of peace in Yemen “snatched away” from people, according to CNN.

“But it’s one more terrible consequence. And it is a really serious consequence of the war in Gaza,” he said.