{"id":279210,"date":"2023-12-31T11:14:17","date_gmt":"2023-12-31T11:14:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=279210"},"modified":"2024-01-02T10:14:32","modified_gmt":"2024-01-02T10:14:32","slug":"us-navy-sinks-3-houthi-boats-attacking-merchant-ship-in-red-sea-us-says","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=279210","title":{"rendered":"US Navy sinks 3 Houthi boats attacking merchant ship in Red Sea, US says"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align: center;\">Israel&#8217;s Red Sea port of Eilat<\/p>\n<h1 style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong>Kevin Shalvey and Victoria Arancio \u2013 ABC News Dec 31, 2023<\/strong><\/h1>\n<p>U.S. Navy helicopters fired on and and sank three small boats carrying Houthi militants in the Red Sea on Sunday, after U.S. warships responded to a distress call from a merchant vessel, military officials said.<\/p>\n<p>A Maersk container ship, the Singapore-flagged Hangzhou, issued a distress call at about 6:30 a.m. local time, U.S. Central Command said in a <a href=\"https:\/\/x.com\/CENTCOM\/status\/1741381969936834951?s=20\">statement<\/a> on Sunday. The merchant vessel said four small boats were attacking it.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;The small boats, originating from Houthi-controlled areas in Yemen, fired crew served and small arms weapons at the MAERSK HANGZHOU, getting to within 20 meters of the vessel, and attempted to board the vessel,&#8221; Central Command said.<\/p>\n<p>Helicopters from two U.S. ships &#8212; the USS Eisenhower and the USS Gravely &#8212; responded and issued verbal calls to the small boats, U.S. officials said.<\/p>\n<p>While the helicopters were &#8220;in the process of issuing verbal calls to the small boats, the small boats fired upon the U.S. helicopters with crew served weapons and small arms,&#8221; Central Command said.<\/p>\n<p>Service members aboard the Navy helicopters returned fire and sank three of the four small boats, killing the crews, U.S. officials said. The fourth boat fled the area.<\/p>\n<p>Sunday&#8217;s incident was the second time in 24 hours that the Hangzhou had issued a distress call, U.S. Navy officials said.<\/p>\n<p>The ship had been traveling on Saturday evening about 55 nautical miles southwest of Al Hudaydah, Yemen, when it was hit by an unknown object, a Maersk spokesperson told ABC News.<\/p>\n<p>The 14,000-container vessel continued north afterward, heading toward its destination of Port Suez, Egypt.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Maersk can also confirm that after the initial attack on the vessel, four boats approached the vessel and engaged fire in an expected attempt to board the vessel,&#8221; said Adhish Alawani, a Maersk spokesperson.<\/p>\n<p>Maersk has delayed all transits through the area for the next 48 hours, as the incident is investigated, he said.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/abcnews.go.com\/International\/us-navy-sinks-3-houthi-boats-attacking-merchant\/story?id=106016731\">Source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The U.S. is now getting drawn into a conflict to ensure that shipping to and from Israel\u2019s Red Sea port of Eilat remains open  <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":39262,"featured_media":279212,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[118,58,37],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-279210","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-7-10-gaza-war","category-Current_Affairs","category-Israel_Anti-Semitism_Zionism_and_US-UK_allies"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/279210","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/39262"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=279210"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/279210\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":279211,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/279210\/revisions\/279211"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/279212"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=279210"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=279210"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=279210"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}