A team of Navy SEALs that lost two sailors overboard while searching a small boat off the coast of Somalia went on to find suspected Iranian missile parts believed bound for Iran-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen, three U.S. defense officials told NBC News.
American ships and aircraft are continuing a huge search and rescue mission in the Gulf of Aden, between Yemen and Somalia, after the two SEALs disappeared into rough, nighttime seas Thursday.
The team, attached to the Fifth Fleet, based in Bahrain, were on board the USS Lewis B. Puller, which the Navy describes as a “mobile sea base.” They identified a small boat, known as a dhow, that was not flagged to any country and had no paperwork so decided to board it, the three officials said.
During their attempt, one of the sailors was knocked overboard and another one jumped in after them, the officials said.
The team did go on to search the dhow and found missile parts believed to be from Iran and bound for the Houthis. The crew of the unflagged vessel were detained, the missile parts confiscated, and the dhow sunk, per standard protocol, the officials said.
The search comes amid renewed international focus on Yemen’s Houthis, who have been launching attacks against international shipping in the Red Sea, which the Gulf of Aden leads into. They say they are only targeting Israel-linked ships — a claim that has been widely disputed — in protest against Israel’s war in Gaza and in support of their fellow Iran-backed militants Hamas.
In response to these Houthi attacks on shipping, the U.S. and its allies have started an international mission to protect this vital maritime artery. The SEALs’ search last week was not part of this mission but rather a broader practice by Western allies in recent years to apprehend dhows allegedly responsible for ferrying Iranian weapons to the Houthis, a charge Iran denies.
On Monday, U.S. Central Command said in a statement that Houthis “fired an anti-ship ballistic missile from Houthi-controlled areas of Yemen and struck the M/V Gibraltar Eagle, a Marshall Islands-flagged, U.S.-owned and operated container ship.”
And Sunday, a U.S. fighter jet shot down an anti-ship cruise missile fired toward an American destroyer in the Red Sea from Houthi militant-controlled areas of Yemen, the U.S. military said.
It appeared to be the first Houthi attack since U.S.-led strikes on sites the rebel group controls in Yemen, the latest of which targeted a Houthi radar site Saturday night.
