By Guy Birchall
A rescue operation got underway on July 10 to search for more than a dozen crew members who have gone missing after Houthi terrorists sank a ship in the Red Sea.
The Yemen-based terrorist organization released footage of the sinking of the Eternity C, a Greek-owned vessel sailing under the Liberian flag, which it targeted with gunfire and drones in an hours-long attack.
The attack follows an assault on the Magic Seas bulk carrier, also Greek-owned and Liberian-flagged, on July 6, which resulted in the loss of the ship and all its cargo.
The attacks killed at least three crew members, with the U.S. Embassy in Yemen (which operates out of Saudi Arabia) stating that the Houthis may have kidnapped some of those on board.
“After killing their shipmates, sinking their ship and hampering rescue efforts, the Houthi terrorists have kidnapped many surviving crew members of the Eternity C,” the embassy said in a post on social media platform X.
“We call for their immediate and unconditional safe release.”
The crew of the Eternity C included 22 sailors, 21 Filipinos, and one Russian, as well as a three-member security team.
The U.S. State Department on July 8 also issued a condemnation of the attacks on the Eternity C and Magic Seas, saying the attacks “demonstrate the ongoing threat that Iran-backed Houthi rebels pose to freedom of navigation and to regional economic and maritime security.”
“The United States has been clear,” the statement said. “We will continue to take necessary action to protect freedom of navigation and commercial shipping from Houthi terrorist attacks, which must be condemned by all members of the international community.”
The European Union naval mission in the Red Sea, Operation Aspides, released a statement via social media platform X on the morning of July 8, saying the number of people recovered from the stricken vessel had reached 10 overnight.
In the footage released by the Houthis, a member of the group can be heard purportedly offering those on board, via radio, the opportunity to flee the sinking vessel.
In a statement released by their Saba news agency, the Houthis said they targeted the Eternity C because it was heading for the Israeli port of Eilat, which they referred to as the “port of Umm al-Rashrash in Occupied Palestine.”
According to the statement, the attack was “carried out with an unmanned boat and six cruise and ballistic missiles,” and resulted in the “complete sinking of the ship.”
“Following the operation, a group of special forces from the naval forces moved to rescue a number of the ship’s crew, provide them with medical care, and transport them to a safe location,” the Houthi statement added, without providing details on the condition of the crew members, or their nationalities.
Also on July 10, the group announced it had launched a missile at Israel’s Ben-Gurion Airport.
This claim was corroborated by a post on X from the Israel Defense Forces announcing that sirens had sounded across the center of the country due to “projectile fire from Yemen.” However, it does not appear that the missile reached its intended target.
The terrorist group, which controls much of Yemen, is a self-described arm of Iran’s “Axis of Resistance,” and has been firing at Israel and targeting shipping in the Red Sea since the start of the 2023 conflict between Israel and Hamas in Gaza, in what the group describes as solidarity with the Palestinians.
Also known as Ansar Allah, the Houthis are a Zaidi Shia movement that unseated Yemen’s internationally recognized government from the capital, Sanaa, in 2014. They currently control an area encompassing about 80 percent of the country, home to 32 million people.
The group was redesignated a foreign terrorist organization by the U.S. State Department in March, after the Biden administration removed the designation in 2021.
