CENTCOM admits that one of the Houthis' tactical ballistic missiles - undemanding targets as far as such things go - got through the Gravely's interceptors. What they neglected to mention was that it struck about a hundred meters from the Maersk Detroit, and that after the attack the convoy aborted the transit and retreated back into the Arabian Sea rather than press on into enemy fire.

[...]

Was this operational plan inadequate? Almost certainly - reading between the lines, it reeks of a complacent assumption that Houthi missile batteries had actually been suppressed by a few rounds of air raids and that a single AEGIS destroyer could handle anything the Houthis could throw at them with no need for additional contingency planning. In the event neither of these assumptions were correct - and because of it a convoy covered by one of the US Navy's premier warships retreated from a battle that was going badly.

Houthi missile attack forces cargo ships with US navy escort to turn around

[...]
Maersk said in a statement: "En route, both ships reported seeing explosions close by and the US navy accompaniment also intercepted multiple projectiles. The crew, ship and cargo are safe and unharmed. The US navy has turned both ships around and is escorting them back to the Gulf of Aden."

Maersk said its US subsidiary was now suspending Red Sea transits. "The safety of our crews is of utmost importance. Following the escalation of risk, MLL [Maersk Line Limited] is suspending transits in the region until further notice" the spokesperson said.

Both commercial vessels carry cargo for the US government and are enrolled in programs run by the defence department to transport forces, supplies and equipment during times of war or national emergency, which is why they were escorted through the strait.

Centcom also reported that on Tuesday night it had launched two pre-emptive strikes designed to stop imminent Houthi attacks. Previous attacks last Friday underlined the current inability of the US and UK to neutralise the Houthis despite multiple attacks on their missile sites.

The UK defence secretary, Grant Shapps, told MPs that risks to global navigation continued, with shipping costs rising by as much as 300%.

Indeed this is in part due to the blockade - which only targets Israel, but now also US and UK ships - however, note that logistics in general was collapsing even before Israel escalated its genocide: Record number of British haulage businesses going bust

"Our military strikes did not cause any civilian casualties," Shapps said.

That remains to be seen, but analysis suggests that these strikes may be lacking in sufficient intelligence to be having much impact at all on Houthi operations.

The attacks on the Houthis were backed by the influential chair of the UK's foreign affairs select committee, Alicia Kearns, who said it was ahistorical to regard the Houthis as anti-colonial freedom fighters.

The Houthis defending their country against the years-long Saudi-US war demonstrates that they are indeed anti-colonial freedom fighters.

Houthi forces in Yemen have written to the UN demanding that all UK and US staff leave the country within a month on the basis that their governments are mounting assaults on Yemen. The warning also appeared to apply to NGOs working in the capital, Sana'a. In addition, it was reported that the Houthis had prevented a UN plane from landing in the strategically important town of Marib on Wednesday.

[...]

The Houthi foreign ministry letter to the UN stated: "The ministry ... would like to stress that you must inform officials and workers with US and British citizenships to prepare to leave the country within 30 days." It was sent to the UN's acting humanitarian coordinator in Yemen, Peter Hawkins.

The letter also ordered foreign organisations not to hire American and British citizens for Yemen's operations.

The US embassy said in a statement that it was aware of reports about the letter but "cannot speak on behalf of the UN or humanitarian organisations in Yemen as to what they may have received from Houthi 'authorities'".

The British embassy said staff had not yet been told to leave and the mission was in close contact with the UN on the issue.

"The UN provide vital assistance to the Yemeni people ... via the very sea routes that the Houthis are jeopardising," the British mission in Yemen said in a statement.

This vital assistance failed to get to the Houthis when the West's war on the country created, what the UN itself called the 'world's worst humanitarian crisis', with hundreds of thousands of Yemenis suffering starvation.

The UK's Middle East minister called for the UN to be allowed to get on with the job.

Ahmed bin Mubarak, the foreign minister of the UN-recognised Aden-based government, also claimed Houthi militia had earlier in the week threatened to target a Sudanese civilian plane transporting stranded Yemenis from Port Sudan to Mokha airport.

He made the claim in a meeting with the UN's Yemen envoy, Hans Grundberg, to illustrate the impossibility of dealing with the Houthis, who resisted a concerted Saudi-led air campaign after capturing Sana'a and forcing the western-backed former president to flee in 2015.

In April 2022 a ceasefire between the Houthis and the Saudi-led coalition prompted a decline in violence, and fighting has largely remained in abeyance despite the official expiry of the truce in October.

Which demonstrates how, unlike the West and Israel, the Houthis keep to their word. Journalist Pepe Escobar recently reported that Saudi Arabia and the Houthis wished to further their commitment to peace, however the West blocked such an agreement.

Bin Mubarak stressed the need for the international community to reconsider dealing seriously with the Houthi militias, remarks indicating that the UN-backed government wants to see the internal peace process frozen because of the Houthis' behaviour.

Grundberg also met the Saudi and UAE ambassadors to Yemen, and the ambassadors of the five permanent members of the UN security council.

He stressed the need to maintain "a favourable environment for the continuation of dialogue in Yemen, and the importance of continuing concerted regional and international support for peace efforts".

Saudi Arabia is not an enthusiastic supporter of the western strikes on the Houthis because it fears they will destabilise peace talks.

Yemen Houthi rebels fire a missile at a US warship

Yemen's Houthi rebels launched a missile Friday at a U.S. warship patrolling the Gulf of Aden, forcing it to shoot down the projectile, the U.S. military said Friday.

The attack on the destroyer USS Carney marks a further escalation in the biggest confrontation at sea the U.S. Navy has seen in the Middle East in decades. It represents the first time the Houthis directly targeted a U.S. warship since the rebels began their attacks on shipping in October, a U.S. official said on the condition of anonymity because no authorization had been given to discuss the incident.

As we read above, this is not the first time the Houthis have directly targeted a US warship.

That contradicted a statement by the U.S. military's Central Command, which said the Houthis fired "toward" the Carney. As it has in previous strikes, the Pentagon has said it was difficult to determine what exactly the Houthis were trying to hit.

Hilarious!

Ever since the Israel-Hamas war broke out, the U.S. has tried to temper its descriptions of the strikes targeting its bases and warships to try to prevent the conflict from becoming a wider regional war.

Acknowledging Friday's assault as a direct attack on a U.S. warship is important, said Brad Bowman, a senior director at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies.

"They're now finally calling a spade a spade, and saying that, yeah, they're trying to attack our forces, they're trying to kill us," Bowman said.

Tempering the language, while aimed at preventing a wider war, has had the opposite effect of further enabling the Houthis, he said.

In Friday's attack, an anti-ship ballistic missile came near the USS Carney, an Arleigh-Burke class destroyer that's been involved in American operations to try and stop the Houthi campaign since November, Central Command said.

"The missile was successfully shot down by USS Carney," Central Command said. "There were no injuries or damage reported."

It's now clear that the US is obscuring the damage, and deaths, it is is incurring: US Navy Seals 'missing' in Red Sea declared dead, Yemen's Ansarallah imply their strike against warship was responsible

Houthi military spokesman Brig. Gen. Yahya Saree did not acknowledge the Carney attack, but claimed a missile attack on a commercial vessel that set it ablaze.

The U.S. Navy's top Mideast commander told the AP on Monday that the Houthi attacks were the worst since the so-called Tanker War of the 1980s. It culminated in a one-day naval battle between Washington and Tehran, and also saw the U.S. Navy accidentally shoot down an Iranian passenger jet, killing 290 people in 1988.

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Ukrainskaya Pravda, a Ukrainian newspaper, initially reported that the plane had indeed been downed by the country's military, but edited its article on the incident shortly afterwards to remove this information.

The newspaper celebrated the downing as a success for the country's "victorious armed forces," Lavrov told the press conference. However, once it became known that the plane was carrying POWs, "the Ukrainian propaganda started to sweep it under the carpet...and find other explanations."

Moscow is still working to ascertain Kiev's motives, he said.

One of the Ukrainian prisoners who died on Wednesday had spoken to RT in 2022 about why he surrendered. Konstantin Danilchenko was on the plane shot down by Ukrainian missiles over Russia's Belgorod Region, with no survivors.
[...]
RT found Danilchenko's name on the passenger manifest of the doomed flight, at number 11. It sounded familiar because of a 2022 video published by the Russian Defense Ministry, in which the recently captured Ukrainian soldier spoke about his reasons for surrendering.

"I wanted to live," Danilchenko said in the video. "We are considered 'meat', and everyone understands why our leadership is so cold towards us."

[...]

The Russian Defense Ministry said on Wednesday that Ukraine had been informed about the transport of the prisoners by air, accusing Kiev of shooting down the plane with their citizens on purpose in a "terrorist act."

Ukrainian media initially reported that a plane resupplying missiles to Russian troops targeting Kharkov had been shot down. Those reports were quietly deleted when it emerged that the IL-76 was transporting Ukrainian prisoners. The General Staff in Kiev issued a statement calling Russian transport flights a legitimate target because of attacks on Kharkov, but did not address the fate of the POWs.

Ukrainian forces used a US-supplied Patriot missile to shoot down a Russian cargo plane carrying 65 Ukrainian prisoners of war, French state broadcaster Radio France reported on Wednesday, citing a source in the country's military.
[...]
Radio France's source did not provide any additional information, but the claim backs up an earlier assertion by a senior Russian MP that "Patriot or Iris-T air defense missiles" were used to bring the aircraft down.

The defense ministry stated that the missiles were launched from the Liptsy suburb of Kharkov, around 100km from the site of the crash. Both the American Patriot and German Iris-T systems are capable of engaging targets from this range, and the General Staff of Ukraine's armed forces said on Wednesday that it regularly uses such systems to target Russian military flights in the area, without explicitly admitting that it shot down the Il-76.
[...]

Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky has not admitted that his forces were responsible for the downing of the plane. In a statement on Wednesday, he called for an "international investigation" to determine "all the hard facts" surrounding the incident.

The closest step to an admission of guilt came from Ukraine's military intelligence agency, the GUR. In a statement on Wednesday night, the agency claimed that it "was not informed about the need to ensure the safety of the airspace" over the border, and that it did not know how the prisoners would be transported.

The White House has not commented on the alleged use of Patriot missiles in the incident. National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said on Wednesday that the US was "not in a position to confirm" any reports on the attack, and was working to "get more clarity and more information on it."

Both sides are conducting separate investigations into the downing of a Russian military aircraft in the Belgorod region on 24 January 2023, the United Nations senior political official told the Security Council today, as numerous delegates underscored that the incident occurred in the context of Moscow's war of aggression.

"The United Nations is not in a position to verify [the] reports or the circumstances of the crash," said Rosemary A. DiCarlo, Under-Secretary-General for Political and Peacebuilding Affairs. According to Moscow, the plane was carrying 65 Ukrainian prisoners of war, six Russian crew members and three Russian military personnel. According to Kyiv, the plane may have been carrying missiles for the Russian Federation military system.