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Yemen has claimed responsibility for an attack on the USS Harry Truman aircraft carrier that caused a second F/A-18 fighter jet to fall into the Red Sea, having already caused the flagship to lose one on April 28th.
Five people familiar with the matter told CNN that a failure to arrest occurred as the jet was trying to land on the carrier, causing the ejection of the two crew members and a loss of the plane. Houthi military spokesmen said they “took a shot” at the carrier hours before, though CNN was unable to confirm if the two incidents were related.
The loss occurred just one day before President Trump announced that the US had agreed to a ceasefire with the Houthis via mediators in Oman, with Houthi spokesman Yahya Saree stating that “this operation was carried out before the American enemy announced the cessation of its aggression against our country”.
The loss of a second jet means that losses of air power destroyed by the Houthis since operations against them began has increased to $760 million, though through ammunition and repairs, it’s well over $1 billion.
Without stopping the Houthis, it bears repeating, as the announcement that the loss of the F/A-18 was from their strike was coupled with claims that two drones targeted Israel’s Ramon Airport in the Umm al-Rashrash area and the city of Jaffa. The Israeli military reported that its forces downed only one drone that was coming from the east.
The drone attacks come after a Houthi ballistic missile struck a road at Ben-Gurion International Airport, outside Tel Aviv. The response from Israel was several air raids that killed 7 at the main airport of Sana’a, Yemen’s capital city.
“We will continue to ban Israeli navigation in the Red and Arabian Seas, and to ban air traffic at Lod [Ben Gurion] Airport. Our operations will continue until the aggression against Gaza stops and the blockade is lifted,” Saree said.
Saree but also Mohammed Abdulsalam, a senior Houthi official who spoke to Reuters, clarified that the agreement reached with the US does not include Israel in any way. Their position is that attacks on Zionists will continue until the genocide in Gaza is ended and blockade of international aid to the Palestinians is lifted.
President Trump on Tuesday commended the Houthis for their resilience under US attacks, as they became the latest Muslim irregular force to defeat American forces in what last year was called the “longest-running naval battle since World War II”.
“We take their word for it… We hit them very hard. They had a great capacity to withstand punishment,” he said. “You could say there’s a lot of bravery there”.
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PICTURED ABOVE: An FA-18 Super Hornet on the deck of the USS Harry Truman. PC: US Navy
