Saudi-led Coalition Destroys Houthi Boats Threatening Oil Tanker

The Saudi-led Arab military coalition destroyed on Wednesday two boats of the Iran-aligned Houthi rebels threatening a commercial oil tanker in the Red Sea, the United Arab Emirates’ (UAE) state news agency WAM reports.

The UAE Armed Forces, as part of the Arab Coalition Forces, destroyed two boats of the Houthis militias who were threatening one of the commercial oil tankers in the Red Sea, while two other boats managed to escape, WAM reported, without giving details on whether the oil tanker has been damaged in the incident.

Last month, a Saudi oil tanker was targeted by the Houthi movement off Yemen’s port of Hodeidah, sustaining minor damages and completing its course north.

Yemen lies along one of the main global oil chokepoints in the Red Sea. Millions of barrels of crude oil pass Yemeni shores from the Suez Canal en route to Europe every day.

The Iran-aligned Houthi rebels, who have been fighting the Saudi-led Arab coalition in Yemen since 2015, have fired or claimed to have fired many missiles on Saudi Arabia since 2015, but they have caused little damage, and many of those missiles have been intercepted by the Saudi military.

In recent weeks, the conflict looks to have escalated, with Houthis firing ballistic missiles over Riyadh, in retaliation for air raids by a Saudi-led coalition. The Royal Saudi Air Defense intercepted at least one ballistic missile over Riyadh in that attack.

The Houthi movement has also claimed several times in the past few weeks to have fired ballistic missiles targeting Saudi Aramco oil facilities in provinces close to the border with Yemen.

The latest ballistic missile from Yemen was fired last week at an Aramco facility in the Jizan province, the latest in a string of escalating tensions between the Houthis and the Kingdom. A spokesman for the Saudi-led coalition said that Saudi air defense forces had tracked the missile, which had landed in the middle of the uninhabited desert.

By Tsvetana Paraskova for Oilprice.com

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