Details have emerged of an attack by Houthis that reportedly damaged an MSC Mediterranean Shipping Company vessel in the Indian Ocean, showing the militant group’s ability to strike far from its base in Yemen.
A document published by Combined Maritime Forces said that the coalition received a report that a drone known as an uncrewed aerial system attacked the Swiss giant’s 14,900-teu container ship MSC Orion (built 2020) while it was 170 nautical miles (314 km) from the Yemeni island of Socotra.
More than 300 nautical miles from the Horn of Africa, that makes it one of the Houthis’ farthest-reaching attacks yet.
On Monday, Houthi military spokesman Yahya Saree announced that the group targeted the vessel.
The Royal Navy’s UK Maritime Trade Operations said in a report on Tuesday that a drone attacked a merchant vessel late Friday night.
In its notice, Combined Maritime Forces, a 43-nation military coalition in the region, said the MSC Orion was headed northeast with its Automatic Information System transponder broadcasting its location at the time of the incident.
The ship suffered minor damage in the attack and there were no injuries, but debris from what appears to be a drone was found on the vessel, according to the coalition’s Joint Maritime Information Center.
MSC spokesman Giles Read declined to comment on the reports of an attack on the vessel, saying the company would only do so if the vessel was damaged.
The information centre said it believes the MSC Orion was targeted because of a “perceived” Israeli affiliation, and the Houthi spokesman described it as “belonging to the Zionist entity”, according to a machine translation.
Several shipping databases, including those managed by Clarksons and S&P Global, list the owner of the MSC Orion as Zodiac Maritime, which is controlled by Israeli billionaire Eyal Ofer.
Zodiac spokesman Dustin Eno said the ship is not directly owned by Zodiac and only has a loose connection to the UK company. The MSC Orion is an MSC ship, he said.
The crew is safe and the ship is transiting to its next port of call, the agency said.
The Joint Maritime Information Center said that ships intending to transit the area should exercise caution. That includes carrying out a risk assessment beforehand, incorporating vessel hardening measures into security plans and continuing to broadcast a location unless it is unsafe to do so.
MSC ships have been targeted twice before in the Indian Ocean.
Last week, the Iranian-backed Houthis claimed that “a number of drones” were launched against the 5,060-teu MSC Veracruz (built 2005), after the group made a similar claim related to the 24,300-dwt multipurpose vessel MSC Grace F (built 1991) earlier in April.
If the attacks took place as claimed, both ships and their crew emerged unscathed.
