From that latest edition of the DEBKAfile news letter"
"US intel warns shipping to beware of Houthi mines"
6 March.
"The US Office of Naval Intelligence (ONI) warned merchant ships of the dangers of mines set by Iranian-backed Yemeni rebel Houthis in the Bab al-Mandeb Strait near Yemen's Mokha port entrance . . . ONI added that attacks on ships in the strait, especially commercial ones, will trigger the involvement of other parties, pointing out that the US Navy will deploy all the needed efforts to protect the freedom of ships. Bab el-Mandeb, which is 25 kilometers wide, is a very important and crowded waterway for global navigation, through which merchant ships in the Gulf of Aden sail to the Red Sea, and then to the Suez Canal and the Mediterranean Sea . . . [daily] more than 60 commercial ships and 3.3 million barrels of oil a day cross the strait."
Mokha port. That apparently is a merchant vessel laying on it's side? Maybe hit a mine and sank?
A whole bunch of players [combatants] in the Yemeni Civil War. The Houthi rebels, Iranians and their Hezbollah proxies on one side [all Shia]. The forces of the Yemeni central government, Saudi and various other foreign interventionists on the other side [Sunni]. American naval forces enforcing a free "navigation and use of the sea"the vicinity Bab el-Mandeb.
See previous blog entries the topic of which was the Strait of Bab el-Mandeb and the importance of same:
http://militaryanalysis.blogspot.com/2015/03/bab-el-mandeb.html
http://militaryanalysis.blogspot.com/2015/12/greater-hanish_20.html
http://militaryanalysis.blogspot.com/2016/10/irgc-yemen.html
http://militaryanalysis.blogspot.com/2016/10/bab-al-mandeb.html
http://militaryanalysis.blogspot.com/2016/10/gate-of-tears.html
coolbert.
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