Red Sea Security Crisis: Houthis Claim Ballistic Missile Attack on Saudi Oil Tanker Off Yanbu

Yemen’s Iran-backed Houthis said that they had attacked a Saudi oil tanker off Yanbu, in the Red Sea, as the rebels pressed on with their declared maritime blockade of the Saudi Arabia.

The group “successfully targeted the Saudi oil tanker ‘Wafa’ in the northern Red Sea, off the coast of Yanbu, with a number of ballistic missiles,” their military spokesman Yahya Saree said in a video statement, adding this was the eighth ship they targeted since the start of the blockade on July 22.

Pakistan PM to visit Saudi Arabia tomorrow: Al Arabiya

Al Arabiya has reported that Pakistan Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif and the nation’s Army Chief Asim Munir are set to visit Saudi Arabia tomorrow.

The Saudi news channel attributed this information to its sources.

Sailors trapped in the Arabian Gulf

Trapped on a commercial ship anchored 4 miles off Iran’s coast, about two dozen merchant seamen are entering their fourth month of living under the watch of Iranian guards.

Iran seized the vessel, the MSC Francesca, as it tried to pass through the Strait of Hormuz on April 22. Its sailors are from Montenegro, Indonesia, the Philippines and other countries. All are far from home. They have no idea when they might be released and very little contact with the outside world.

The sailors “have no means of communication except every several days 30 min of internet,” a person familiar with conditions on the Francesca wrote.

The crew members of the Francesca are a subset of a much larger group of sailors in harm’s way in the Middle East. The attacks by the United States and Israel on February 28, followed by Iran’s closure of the Strait of Hormuz, immediately stranded some 1,500 ships and nearly 20,000 sailors, according to the International Maritime Organisation.

Source: Khaleejtimes