Two ballistic missiles were fired from Houthi-controlled areas in Yemen in the direction of USS Mason, an Arleigh-Burke class destroyer, U.S. Central Command said Sunday night. The missiles landed in the Gulf of Aden about 11 miles from the ship, and no injuries or damage were reported.
The USS Mason, which is part of the Eisenhower Carrier Strike Group, had responded to a distress call from M/V Central Park, a commercial ship, saying it was under attack, CENTCOM said.
“Upon arrival, coalition elements demanded release of the vessel,” CENTCOM wrote. “Subsequently, five armed individuals debarked the ship and attempted to flee via their small boat. The MASON pursued the attackers resulting in their eventual surrender.”
Zodiac said the Central Park, a tanker ship, was carrying phosphoric acid and had an international crew of 22, according to The Associated Press. CENTCOM said Sunday night the ship’s crew was safe.
The missiles were fired early Monday morning local time as Mason was “concluding its response” to the distress call, CENTCOM said.
The Central Park sails under the Liberian flag and is managed by Zodiac Maritime, according to The Associated Press.
Zodiac described the vessel as being owned by Clumvez Shipping Inc., though other records directly linked Zodiac as the owner. London-based Zodiac Maritime is part of Israeli billionaire Eyal Ofer’s Zodiac Group. British corporate records listed two men with the last name Ofer as a current and former director of Clumvez Shipping, including Daniel Guy Ofer, who is also a director at Zodiac Maritime.
Yemen’s Houthi rebels, who have controlled the capital, Sanaa, since 2014, offered no comment on the seizure. However, Yemen’s internationally recognized government, which is based out of nearby Aden, blamed the rebels for the attack in a statement carried by their state-run news agency.
“The Yemeni government has renewed its denunciation of the acts of maritime piracy carried out by the terrorist Houthi militias with the support of the Iranian regime, the most recent of which was the hijacking of the Central Park,” the statement read.
The attack happened in a part of the Gulf of Aden that is in theory is under the control of that government’s forces and is fairly distant from Houthi-controlled territory in the country. Somali pirates are not known to operate in that area.
Zodiac Maritime has been targeted previously amid a wider yearslong shadow war between Iran and Israel. In 2021, a drone attack assessed by the U.S. and other Western nations to have been carried out by Iran killed two crew members aboard Zodiac’s oil tanker Mercer Street off the coast of Oman.
The British military’s United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations, which provides warnings to sailors in the Middle East, had earlier issued a warning to sailors that “two black-and-white craft carrying eight persons in military-style clothing” had been seen in the area.
The UKMTO put the Central Park’s location over 35 miles south of Yemen’s coast, some 50 miles east of Djibouti and around 70 miles northeast of Somalia in the Gulf of Aden, a key shipping route.
Also on Sunday, the USS Eisenhower, which had been deployed to the region amid the Israel-Hamas war, entered the Arabian Gulf after sailing through the Straight of Hormuz, CENTCOM said.
The aircraft carrier was accompanied by guided-missile cruiser USS Philippine Sea, guided-missile destroyers USS Gravely and the USS Stethem and the French frigate Languedoc, CENTCOM said.
The Central Park seizure comes after a container ship, CMA CGM Symi, owned by another Israeli billionaire, came under attack Friday by a suspected Iranian drone in the Indian Ocean. Iran has not acknowledged carrying out the attack, nor did it respond to questions from the AP about that assault.
Both the Symi and the Central Park had been behaving as if they faced a threat in recent days.
The ships had switched off their Automatic Identification System trackers, according to data from MarineTraffic.com analyzed by the AP. Ships are supposed to keep their AIS active for safety reasons, but crews will turn them off if it appears they might be targeted. In the Central Park’s case, the vessel had last transmitted four days ago after it left the Suez Canal heading south into the Red Sea.
Global shipping had increasingly been targeted as the Israel-Hamas war threatens to become a wider regional conflict — even as a truce has halted fighting and Hamas exchanges hostages for Palestinian prisoners held by Israel.
Earlier this month, the Houthis seized a vehicle transport ship also linked to Israel in the Red Sea off Yemen. The Houthis have repeatedly threatened to attack Israeli ships in the waters off Yemen and have launched drone-and-missile attacks targeting Israel during the war. The Shiite Zaydi rebels’ slogan has long been: “God is the greatest; death to America; death to Israel; curse the Jews; victory to Islam.”
Analysts say such attacks both back its Iranian benefactors as well as bolster the Houthis’ position in Yemen as anger has grown against their rule as the civil war there grinds on without resolution.
