The Iran-backed Houthi militia group has continued to attack commercial shipping, hitting an American-owned cargo ship with a ballistic missile in defiance of a wave of US and UK strikes on Yemen.
The strike against the Marshall Islands-flagged Gibraltar Eagle represented a widening of the theatre of war beyond the Red Sea to the Gulf of Aden. The strike hit the cargo hold of the ship and while it was thought to have caused no major damage, will add to fears that the US and UK strikes on Houthi targets in Yemen have not degraded the militia group’s ability to threaten commercial shipping.