The situation in the Red Sea is very tense amidst sporadic skirmishes involving Yemen's Houthis and US Navy units, accompanied by elements of navies of several other countries.
The US Navy destroyed three of four Houthi boats in the Red Sea on Sunday, killing the crews after they tried to hijack a commercial ship and opened fire on the helicopters.
According to the Houthis, 10 of their men were killed in the US Navy attack.
Houthi leader Mohammed Al-Bukhaiti said the group would attack the US ships that killed their troops and would continue to prohibit ships traveling to Israel from crossing the Red Sea.
“This is an attack on Yemen, and there must be retaliation, and America must suffer the repercussions of this attack and crime,” Al-Bukhaiti told France 24 Arabic TV on Sunday night.
The official Houthi news agency ran an editorial under the headline “America has opened the door to hell for itself” on Monday, vowing vengeance for US Navy attacks on their boats in the Red Sea, accusing the US of supporting Israel’s heavy bombardment of Gaza by preventing them from imposing their ban on Israel-linked ships sailing through the Red Sea.
The news agency said that the US Navy performed “a foolish act by targeting three boats, as a result of which ten members of the Yemeni naval forces martyred, thus opening the door of hell upon itself, its ships, and its military bases in the region.”
The Houthis have been amongst the most vocal supporters of the Palestinian Hamas movement in Gaza. Both Hamas and the Houthis are often considered as proxies of Iran, although this is a simplification of a more complex relationship.
In mid-November, in response to the Israeli war against Hamas in Gaza, the Houthis launched their Red Sea attacks by hijacking a commercial ship called Galaxy Leader and rerouting it to the coast of Yemen’s western city of Hodeidah.
In the days that followed, they launched drones and ballistic missiles at commercial and navy ships to force them to avoid the Red Sea.
There is concern that the situation may escalate with more direct confrontations between the Houthis and US forces in the Red Sea. The Houthis are already locked in a struggle against the legitimate government of Yemen which was forced out of the capital Sanaa and Red Sea cities like Hodeida in 2016.
