AFP :
Yemen’s Houthis had paused their Red Sea attacks on commercial ships, carried out in solidarity with Gaza, for months, before claiming two fresh assaults in recent days, one of them deadly.
The Iran-backed rebels have carried out more than 100 attacks on vessels in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden since the start of their campaign in November 2023, according to the Joint Maritime Information Centre, run by a Western naval coalition.
Here are the most significant attacks by the Houthis, who say they have targeted ships linked to Israel, after briefly also striking ships with links to its Western allies the United States and Britain.
On July 7, a day after attacking the Magic Seas, the Houthis targeted another cargo ship, the Eternity C, for two consecutive days, sinking it and forcing the crew to abandon ship.
Operation Aspides — the EU naval task force in the Red Sea — said 10 people had been rescued while others remain missing, including three dead.
The rebels said they “rescued” an unspecified number of people aboard the Liberian-flagged bulk carrier, with the United States accusing them of kidnapping the seafarers.
On July 6, the Houthis attacked and sunk the Greek-owned, Liberian-flagged Magic Seas — their first such assault in 2025 after more than six months of interruption.
All 22 crew members were rescued after they were forced to abandon ship.
The rebels released a propaganda video showing masked, armed men storming the Magic Seas and simultaneous explosions that sank the bulk carrier.
In August 2024, the Houthis struck the Greek-flagged Sounion oil tanker carrying more than a million barrels of oil off Hodeida, causing a fire and cutting engine power.
The crew, 23 Filipinos and two Russians, were rescued the next day by a French frigate operating under the Aspides naval mission.
It was eventually towed away and made safe, but had the Sounion broken up or exploded, it could have caused an oil spill four times larger than that caused by the Exxon Valdez in 1989 off Alaska, experts said at the time.
