A US Navy destroyer was attacked within the Purple Sea on Sunday, the Pentagon stated, which might sign a brand new escalation of tit-for-tat assaults between the US navy and Iran-backed militants.
A Pentagon official stated the USS Carney, together with a number of business ships close by, got here beneath hearth for hours starting round 10 a.m. Sunday. The destroyer intercepted no less than one drone throughout the assault, stated the official, who spoke on situation of anonymity as a result of he was not approved to debate the matter publicly.
The official didn’t say the place the assaults got here from. However since Hamas’s October 7 invasion of Israel, Yemen’s Iran-backed Houthi militia has launched a collection of assaults – together with with drones and missiles – on Israeli and US targets within the Purple Sea.
A Houthi navy spokesman, Yahya Sarea, stated in a press release on Sunday that the militia had attacked two Israeli ships within the Bab al-Mandeb Strait space off the coast of southern Yemen, however made no point out of the US Navy ship . The group fired a missile at one ship and focused a second with a drone, he stated, including that the Houthis would proceed to stop Israeli ships from crusing within the Purple Sea and Arabian Sea till the Israeli military “ends its aggression in Gaza stops’.
In October, the Carney shot down three cruise missiles and several other drones launched from Yemen that the Pentagon stated might have been headed to Israel.
After Hamas attacked Israel, the Biden administration rushed two plane carriers and extra troops to the jap Mediterranean close to Israel to discourage Iran and its allies within the area from increasing the struggle.
Sunday’s assault underscored the chance that the preventing in Gaza might spiral right into a broader battle. For greater than a month, Iranian-backed militias have been finishing up drone and missile assaults on the two,500 US troops in Iraq and 900 troops in Syria.
Shuaib Almosawa reporting contributed.
