A cargo ship that was abandoned on Feb. 18 after being attacked by Yemen’s Houthi rebels has sunk in the Red Sea, officials say.
The Rubymar was struck by a ballistic missile in the Bab el-Mandeb Strait and began drifting northward, taking on water for days.
Yemen’s Houthi militants have been attacking commercial ships in the Red Sea region since mid-November as a show of support for Palestinians in Gaza. This is the first vessel that the group has successfully destroyed as part of its objection to Israel’s war in Gaza.
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Yemen’s Prime Minister Ahmed Awad Bin Mubarak called the ship’s sinking “an unprecedented environmental disaster.”
“It’s a new disaster for our country and our people,” he wrote on X, formerly Twitter. “Every day, we pay for the Houthi militia’s adventures, which were not stopped at plunging Yemen into the coup disaster and war.”
The ship was set to be towed to Saudi Arabia amid concerns of a potential oil spill.
The original attack caused “an 18-mile oil slick,” the U.S. Central Command said in a social media update on Feb. 24.
The British military’s United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations center, which watches over Mideast waterways, separately acknowledged the Rubymar’s sinking Saturday.
