Yemeni Naval Forces Seize Emirati Military Cargo Ship in Territorial Waters (+Video)
TEHRAN (Tasnim) – The spokesman for the Yemeni armed forces said Monday that the country’s naval troops, backed by allied fighters from Popular Committees, have seized a United Arab Emirates-flagged cargo vessel as it was engaged in “hostile acts”.
In a post published on his Twitter page on Monday, Brigadier General Yahya Saree said that the Yemeni forces and their allies captured the vessel after it trespassed into Yemen’s territorial waters and was acting against the security and stability of the country.
The senior Yemeni military official added that the ship was loaded with various munitions, and was seized off the coast of Yemen’s strategic western province of Hudaydah.
For his part, spokesman for Yemen’s popular Ansarullah resistance movement, Mohammed Abdulsalam, underscored that the UAE-flagged vessel was captured while it was carrying out hostile acts in Yemeni waters.
“The successful and unprecedented operation comes within the framework of the legitimate right of the Yemeni nation to confront the Saudi-led aggression and siege,” he said.
According to ship-tracking website MarineTraffic.com, Rwabee left the Saudi port of Jubail in the Persian Gulf in early November and was expected to arrive in Jizan on Tuesday.
In September 2018, Yemeni naval forces, backed by fighters from Popular Committees, targeted a military vessel in a missile attack off the coast of the kingdom’s southwestern border region of Jizan, in response to the Riyadh regime’s atrocious military campaign against their war-ravaged homeland.
A military source, speaking on condition of anonymity, told the Arabic-language al-Masirah television network at the time that the frigate was targeted with a guided missile.
Colonel Aziz Rashed, deputy military spokesman for the Yemeni army, said the attack was in retaliation for a Saudi airstrike against Yemeni fishermen off the coast of the strategic western province of Hudaydah, which killed five people.
On July 25 that year, Yemeni naval forces and their allies targeted and destroyed a Saudi military vessel in a missile attack off the coast of Hudaydah.
Saudi Arabia, backed by the United States and regional allies, launched the war on Yemen in March 2015, with the goal of bringing the government of former Yemeni president Abd Rabbuh Mansour Hadi back to power and crushing the Ansarullah movement.
The war has left hundreds of thousands of Yemenis dead, and displaced millions more. It has also destroyed Yemen’s infrastructure and spread famine and infectious diseases there.
Despite heavily-armed Saudi Arabia’s incessant bombardment of the impoverished country, the Yemeni armed forces and the Popular Committees have grown steadily in strength against the Saudi-led invaders and left Riyadh and its allies bogged down in the country.