The merchant vessel transiting off Yemen’s southern coast exchanged gunfire with an armed small craft on Tuesday in an incident that appears more consistent with piracy than the missile and drone attacks that have characterized the regional conflict involving the Iran-backed Houthi group in Yemen.
A cargo vessel reported being approached by a small craft carrying six-armed individuals approximately 88 nautical miles southwest of Balhaf, Yemen.
“There was an exchange of fire between the small craft and the cargo vessel’s Armed Security Team resulting in the small craft turning away,” UKMTO said in an advisory. Authorities are investigating the incident.
The attack occurred in waters near the Gulf of Aden, a region long associated with Somali piracy, although pirate activity has remained relatively limited compared to the peak years of the late 2000s and early 2010s.
The incident comes just days after Yemen’s Iran-backed Houthi movement announced it would resume attacks against Israeli-linked shipping transiting the Red Sea and surrounding waters. However, the tactics described by UKMTO differ significantly from recent Houthi operations, which have primarily involved missiles, drones and explosive-laden unmanned surface vessels rather than armed personnel operating from small skiffs.
The latest assessment from the Joint Maritime Information Centre (JMIC) noted that while Houthi rhetoric has intensified, no confirmed attacks on merchant shipping have been reported in the Southern Red Sea or Bab el-Mandeb in recent days, and no operational indicators of imminent targeting have been observed. At the same time, the advisory warned that piracy action group activity remains possible in the Gulf of Aden and Somali Basin despite seasonal weather conditions limiting offshore small-boat operations.
JMIC’s latest report also noted that three merchant vessels remain held by Somali pirates, including an oil products tanker seized in April and two additional vessels captured in recent weeks.
The attack follows several recent suspicious approaches involving small craft in the wider region. In two incidents reported in May, armed security teams aboard merchant vessels fired warning shots after skiffs carrying five individuals approached vessels operating near Socotra and in the western Indian Ocean.
No injuries or damage to the vessel were reported.