The military spokesman for the Ansar Allah Houthi group in Yemen, Yahya Al-Sari’i, announced that the group’s fighters targeted the city of Eilat on the Red Sea with drones today, Saturday, as part of pressure on Israel to stop its aggression against the Gaza Strip.
Sarie said that the Air Force “carried out a military operation against sensitive targets in the Umm al-Rashrash area (Eilat) in southern occupied Palestine with a large batch of drones.”
He added that their forces “will continue their operations against the Zionist entity until it stops its aggression against Gaza.”
The targeted locations or the extent of losses are not yet clear.
In the same context, British Defense Secretary Grant Shapps said today that the warship HMS Diamond, belonging to his country’s navy, shot down what was suspected to be an attack drone that was targeting commercial shipping ships in the Red Sea.
Shapps added that the target was successfully destroyed using a Sea Viper missile.
This is the first time that the British Navy has used the Sea Viper missile in combat, which reaches a speed of up to 3 times the speed of sound, according to the same source.
At the same time, Egyptian media reported that a flying object had fallen off Egyptian territorial waters in the city of Dahab, located on the Gulf of Aqaba, without indicating its nature.
Local reports stated that Egyptian air defenses detected the flying object and dealt with it immediately.
The Axios website reported that ship movement to the Israeli port of Eilat had almost completely stopped as a result of the Houthi attacks, while Maersk – one of the largest container shipping companies in the world – announced the temporary halt of all its operations through the Red Sea.
This comes within the framework of the Houthis’ response to the continued Israeli aggression on Gaza, which led to the martyrdom of about 19,000 Palestinians, most of them women and children.
The group previously attacked Israeli ships, taking some of them to Yemeni ports.
Later, the group announced a strategy to prevent cargo ships from arriving in Israel, regardless of the nationality of the ship and the party managing it.
The Houthi group stressed that these measures will continue until Israel allows food and medicine to enter the Gaza Strip.