DUBAI(National Times)- Three Pakistanis are said to be among the six people who lost their lives on Tuesday, as three different ships came under attack in the Red Sea and Gulf of Oman, taking simmering tensions in the world’s most key energy trading corridor up another notch.
Yemen’s coastguard on Tuesday said strikes by the Houthi rebels on a cargo vessel — identified as the Tihamah — resulted in the death of four sailors and two members of rescue personnel deployed during a rescue mission to evacuate the ship.
In a separate incident on Tuesday night, the Saba news agency reported that Houthis attacked a Saudi ship carrying military equipment in Bab el-Mandeb. However, there was no immediate confirmation from Riyadh.
The initial salvo targeting the Tanzania-flagged Tihamah “caused a fire to break out aboard the vessel and inflicted extensive damage, in addition to causing deaths and injuries among its crew, including three Pakistani nationals and one Indonesian national killed,” the coastguard said in a statement.
A second strike targeted the vessel as rescue workers carried out a mission to evacuate the ship.
“The attack struck the site of the rescue operation and resulted in deaths and injuries among the forces participating in the response operation,” the coast guard added, saying 10 people were injured over the course of the strikes.
A Houthi-linked media outlet later reported that the group’s armed forces targeted a ship on Tuesday in the Bab al-Mandeb Strait that it said was carrying Saudi military equipment.
However, there has been no official comment from the Houthis about the alleged attack, or any word from Pakistan’s Foreign Office regarding the Pakistani casualties.
The strikes are the latest in a number of deadly attacks against ships in and around the entrance to the Red Sea since the Houthis announced a naval blockade of Saudi Arabia last month.
Separately, the Panama-flagged container ship Vela Nova was struck by a missile in an attack off Pakistan while sailing into the Gulf of Oman, maritime security sources told Reuters.
The Wall Street Journal reported the vessel was attacked by a US helicopter which fired a Hellfire missile at the ship’s rudder after it tried to evade a US blockade of Iran-linked shipping in the region.
Centcom later confirmed that it had fired missiles into the engine room of a Panama-flagged cargo ship that attempted to break the American blockade of Iran’s ports.
The US Navy MH-60 helicopter fired on and disabled the M/V Vela Nova “after the ship’s civilian crew ignored repeated warnings from American forces, Centcom claimed.
This was the 12th vessel attacked by US forces since its blockade was announced in April and the third since the blockade was re-imposed on July 14.
The ship recently made port calls in Mumbai and Port Klang, Malaysia, where Iran-linked ships have also been spotted, said Charlie Brown, senior advisor at US advocacy group United Against Nuclear Iran (UANI), which monitors Iran-related tanker traffic using ship and satellite tracking.
“The reported US disabling and stopping of the Panama-flagged Vela Nova near the blockade line in the Gulf of Oman, after its recent Mumbai port call alongside these vessels, underscores the heightened scrutiny now being applied to Iran-related shipping,” he said.
The ship was believed to have been hit some 71 nautical miles off Pakistan’s coast, UK maritime risk management group Vanguard said.
