Houthi video shows rebels planted, detonated bombs on seized oil tanker
Glamorized footage is accompanied by chants of ‘death to America; death to Israel; curse the Jews’; EU says salvaging ops have begun, no oil spill detected amid environmental fears
Yemen’s Houthi rebels released footage on Thursday showing that their fighters had boarded and placed explosives on a Greek-flagged tanker, setting off blasts that put the Red Sea at risk of a major oil spill, though the European Union said no oil spill had yet been detected from the Sounion as salvaging operations had begun.
The vessel was abandoned earlier, after the Iran-backed rebels repeatedly attacked it last week.
In the video, the Iran-backed Houthis chant their motto as the bombs detonated aboard the oil tanker: “God is the greatest; death to America; death to Israel; curse the Jews; victory to Islam.”
The blasts capped the most serious attack in weeks by the Houthis in their campaign disrupting the $1 trillion in goods that pass through the Red Sea each year over the Israel-Hamas war in the Gaza Strip, as well as halting some aid shipments to conflict-ravaged Sudan and Yemen.
The Sounion carried some 1 million barrels of oil when the Houthis initially attacked it on August 21 with small arms fire, projectiles and a drone boat. A French destroyer operating as part of the European Union’s Operation Aspides rescued the Sounion’s crew of 25 Filipinos and Russians, as well as four private security personnel, after they abandoned the vessel and took them to nearby Djibouti.
The highly-produced footage released Thursday, set to dramatic music, shows masked Houthi fighters carrying Kalashnikov-style rifles boarding the Sounion after it was abandoned. The bridge and control room appeared ransacked. Fighters then rigged explosives over hatches on its deck leading to the oil tankers below. At least six simultaneous blasts could be seen in the footage.
مشاهد اقتحام وإحراق السفينة اليونانية (SOUNION) في البحر الأحمر والتي قامت الشركة المالكة لها بانتهاك قرار حظر الدخول إلى موانئ فلسطين المحتلة. pic.twitter.com/yGKgUNaIuh
— العميد يحيى سريع (@army21ye) August 29, 2024
Houthi spokesman Yahya Saree wrote on X that the ship had been stormed because its owner company Delta Tankers had “violated the decision to ban entry to the ports of occupied Palestine.”
On Wednesday, the Yemeni rebels said they would allow salvage crews to tow the ship to safety.
Apsides, the European Union’s Red Sea naval mission, said no oil spill was detected from the Sounion, which has been drifting ablaze since August 23.
“It would appear, at least for now, that cooler heads prevailed,” Lars Jensen, CEO of industry consultancy Vespucci Maritime, said on LinkedIn.
The Houthis have sunk two vessels in their 10-month drone and missile campaign against commercial shipping in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden. The rebels say they are attacking Israeli and allied ships in solidarity with Palestinians in Gaza amid the war there — sparked when thousands of Hamas-led terrorists stormed southern Israel to kill nearly 1,200 people and take 251 hostages — though some of the ships were not known to have any connection to Israel or its allies.
The EU mission vowed to “facilitate any courses of action” in coordination with European authorities and neighboring countries to rescue the Sounion and avert an environmental catastrophe.
On Thursday, Pentagon spokesperson Sabrina Singh said the barrels of crude oil on the Sounion were intact, that the vessel itself was leaking some oil from where it was hit and that multiple fires were still burning.
The Houthis’ decision to grant rescue crews safe access to the Sounion came after multiple countries voiced humanitarian and environmental concerns. The move may help avoid what experts warned could be a devastating spill of 150,000 tons of crude oil into the Red Sea.
A spill of that volume would be more than half the size of the largest ever recorded from a ship — 287,000 tons from Atlantic Empress in 1979, according to the International Tanker Owners Pollution Federation.
Despite the respite in hostilities, risks to crew members, vessels and the environment from Houthi attacks remain.
“Even if the [Sounion] can be towed away and we avoid an environmental disaster the threat has not disappeared,” Jensen said, adding that there are dozens of oil tankers and other merchant ships still operating in high-risk areas of the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden.
