Centcom, a unit of the US Department of Defense that deals with military operations in the Middle East, he said that on Sunday afternoon a US fighter plane shot down a missile fired by Yemeni Houthi rebels towards the destroyer USS Laboon in the southern Red Sea. Centcom said the missile was shot down near the coast of the city of al Hudayda, Yemen, and that there was no damage or injuries.
The missile was the first launched by the Houthis since a US-led coalition bombed several rebel military sites in Yemen on Thursday night, in response to attacks that the rebels themselves had carried out in recent weeks against cargo ships transiting the Red Sea . Thursday night’s attack was followed the next day by another smaller attack.
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The Houthis are an Iranian-backed Shiite armed group that dominates about half of Yemen. They have been carrying out attacks against commercial ships transiting the Red Sea since the start of the war in the Gaza Strip, which for them represented a major political opportunity: the attacks in the Red Sea, presented as an act of retaliation against Israel, are made a way to gain legitimacy and prestige within the Islamic world, establishing themselves as important adversaries of Israel in the region and as defenders of the Palestinian cause.