A top U.S. admiral says a U.S. warship has again come under fire in the Red Sea from multiple cruise missiles fired from the coast of Yemen.
Chief of Naval Operations Adm. John Richardson said the guided missile destroyer USS Mason deployed electronic countermeasures to foil the attack and was not hit in Saturday’s incident --the third such attack on U.S. naval vessels in the area in the past week.
U.S. authorities say neither the Mason nor the amphibious transport USS Ponce was hit in the October 9 attacks, and say the Mason and another U.S. vessel were unscathed by further missile fire on Wednesday.
On Saturday, the website Military.com said Richardson, speaking at a ship commissioning in the port city of Baltimore, offered few details of the latest attack and did not say how many missiles were fired.
The October 9 attack on the Mason and the amphibious transport USS Ponce, and Wednesday’s failed attacks prompted a retaliatory barrage of missiles from another warship, the USS Nitze on Thursday. Those U.S. strikes targeted three radar sites in Yemen territory controlled by Iran-backed Houthi rebels.
On Thursday, Iran deployed two warships to the Red Sea, but insisted the move was aimed at preventing piracy in the vital shipping lanes.
The U.S. military has been providing intelligence and logistics to Saudi-led coalition warplanes, which began targeting rebel Houthi positions inside Yemen earlier this year.
VOA's Steve Herman contributed to this report.
