An aircraft takes off to join the US-led coalition strikes against targets in Yemen, from an undisclosed location   (Photo via Reuters)

Sanaa, January 27 (RHC)-- U.S. and British forces have conducted new joint airstrikes on targets in Yemen, hours after the United States military said it had destroyed an anti-ship missile in the country following a missile attack on a British oil tanker in the Gulf of Aden.

Yemen’s Arabic-language al-Masirah television network reported on Saturday that two airstrikes targeted the port of Ras Issa, Yemen's main oil export terminal, in the strategic western province of Hudaydah.

No further details were immediately available.  Earlier in the day, the U.S. military's Central Command (CENTCOM) said in a statement published on social media platform X that it had carried out a strike on a Yemeni “anti-ship missile aimed into the Red Sea and which was prepared to launch.”

On Friday evening, an oil tanker operated on behalf of the commodities group Trafigura was struck by a missile after transiting the Red Sea, a company spokesperson said in a statement.

The Marlin Luanda, a petroleum products tanker vessel, was struck by the missile in the Gulf of Aden. Firefighting equipment on board is being used to suppress a fire in one of the cargo tanks, the spokesman said.

“We are pleased to confirm that all crew on board the Marlin Luanda are safe and the fire in the cargo tank has been fully extinguished.  The vessel is now sailing towards a safe harbor,” Trafigura, which has offices in Britain, said in an update.

Yemeni Armed Forces later claimed responsibility for the attack, describing the vessel as a “British oil ship.”   Yemeni forces used a “number of appropriate naval missiles.  The strike was direct and resulted in the burning of the vessel,” the Yemeni military spokesperson Yahya Saree said in a statement.

Yemenis have declared their open support for Palestine’s struggle against the Israeli occupation since the regime launched a devastating war on Gaza on October 7th after the territory’s Palestinian resistance movements carried out a surprise retaliatory attack, dubbed Operation Al-Aqsa Storm, against the occupying entity.

The United States and Britain have been carrying out strikes on Yemen after Washington and its allies offered the Tel Aviv regime unqualified support and said Yemeni forces bear the consequences of attacks against Israeli-owned ships or merchant vessels heading to the occupied territories.

The Iranian foreign minister says the Islamic Republic has sternly warned the United States over its decision to launch joint strikes with Britain on Yemen as such attacks constitute “a strategic mistake.”
Yemeni Armed Forces have said they won’t stop their attacks until ground and aerial offensives by Israel in Gaza end. The regime has killed over 26,000 people in Gaza since October 7. 

Leader of the Ansarullah resistance movement, Abdul-Malik al-Houthi, has said it is “a great honor and blessing to be confronting America directly.”

The attacks have forced some of the world’s biggest shipping and oil companies to suspend transit through one of the world’s most important maritime trade routes.  Tankers are instead adding thousands of miles to international shipping routes by sailing around the continent of Africa rather than going through the Suez Canal.