Yemen Crisis/Conflict & the "Decisive Storm" Coalition

Jura said:

maybe Russia Today in Spanish confused

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with

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FORBIN said:

Can be funny really

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FORBIN said:

VIDEO: A suicide submarine explodes on a frigate in Saudi Arabia
Published: 6 Feb 2017 09:27 GMT

Channel Al Arabia posted a video showing how a submarine collides and explodes on a Saudi military vessel in a suicide attack.
The Al Arabia television channel has released a video recorded by a camera of the Saudi frigate Al Madinah class that shows the attack last week in waters of the Red Sea. In the recording, one sees a suicide submarine forcefully ram the ship, exploding near a helicopter located on the frigate deck.
Early versions pointed to the attack being carried out with a self-guided missile, but this new video shows that it was carried out with a submarine. The Saudi warship was located near the city of Al Hudayda, 150 kilometers southwest of the Yemeni capital Sana'a.

The perpetrators - in which at least two sailors were killed and three others wounded - were Hutu fighters, local media reported. They also report that, despite the blast, the Saudi ship was able to return to the port of the city of Jeddah (Saudi Arabia).

Yemen is experiencing an armed conflict between forces loyal to the country's president, Abd Rabbuh Mansur al-Hadi, who was forced to leave the country, and the Shi'ite Shiites, allies of Iran.
Since March 2015, a coalition of Arab countries led by Saudi Arabia has intervened militarily against the Hutu rebels, against whom it has carried out thousands of air strikes.

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Jura said:

Jan 30, 2017

... and now found the vid which purports to show the attack viewed from ... the other side:

...

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A new video has emerged revealing additional details of how a Houthi suicide boat attacked a Royal Saudi frigate last week.

The footage — from the ship’s internal close circuit television network – shows the collision of the boat laden with explosives hit the port quarter of the frigate Al Madinah (702) on a clear day with mostly calm seas.

The Jan. 30 attack resulted in the loss of two Saudi sailors. The frigate returned to its homeport at the Royal Saudi Navy base in Jeddah on the Red Sea on Sunday — shortly after the video emerged of the attack.

The response to the attack, the U.S. Navy sent the destroyer USS Cole (DDG-67) off of Yemen, south of the Bab Al-Mandeb strait on a presence operation to reassure allies in the region.

Cole and its crew were the victim of a similar suicide boat attack when it was docked in Yemen in 2000. The attack killed 17 sailors and injured more than 30.

The U.S. made a similar show of presence following the anti-ship cruise missile attack on the UAE leased HSV Swift sending two guided missile destroyers and amphibious warships to the Red Sea.

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Jura said:

what the heck ...

hey FORBIN what's funny here?? you posted Russia Today baloney about Hutu (highlighted below, twice, in what you posted) submarine (highlighted below, thrice, in what you posted) involved in the attack:
Yesterday at 9:34 PM
I then hoped Yesterday at 9:44 PM you might realize what nonsense you posted, but oops, I was wrong
OK I don't have time for this

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bd popeye said:

According to the media in the US any special ops military action that is not 100% success is classified as "botched." It's easy for armchair military types to criticize the military... most never served a day.

War sucks and mistakes do happen. But I think the mission was successful...simply because the objective was accomplished.

One more thing the media needs to realize ..the bad guys do shoot back.

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Responding to a growing number of dangerous incidents in waters around Yemen, the US Navy is expanding its presence in the Red Sea, especially around the Bab el Mandeb strait at the southern entrance to the waterway.

The destroyer Cole was tasked on Feb. 3 with patrolling in the region, days after a suicide boat attack by Yemeni Houthi rebels on the Saudi frigate Al Madinah off the port of Al Hudaydah killed two sailors on the warship. Two other suicide boats in the attack were driven off by gunfire.

Now, Pentagon sources say two more destroyers are likely to be stationed in the Red Sea, patrolling opposite ends of the 1,400-mile long body of water. A US assault ship also is staying in the region, carrying attack aircraft and Marines of the 11th Marine Expeditionary Unit.

The destroyers could come from the George H. W. Bush carrier strike group, which was operating in the Mediterranean Sea as late as Feb. 10. The destroyers Laboon and Truxtun are part of the group, which left Norfolk Jan. 21 and is headed to the Central Command region in the Middle East on a regularly scheduled deployment. Whether or not directly associated with tensions in the region, the entire group needs to pass through the Suez Canal and the Red Sea to get to its eventual assigned operating areas.

The destroyers carry significant anti-air and anti-missile weapons as well as Tomahawk land-attack cruise missiles.

For the record, the Pentagon would not confirm nor deny the movements. Christopher Sherwood, a Defense Department spokesman, would only say that, “the US Navy maintains a continuous combat-ready force within the Arabian Gulf, Gulf of Oman, Arabian Sea, Gulf of Aden, and Red Sea to protect the free-flow of commerce, reassure our allies and partners and deter acts of aggression against our forces and our partners.”

The waters around the Bab el Mandeb are quite familiar to US Navy warships, which have patrolled in the Gulf of Aden since about 2008 against Somali-based pirates. With rare exceptions, all US Navy warships transiting from the Mediterranean Sea to the Indian Ocean and the Pacific pass through the strait, including aircraft carriers and submarines.

Ironically, it was at the strategic Yemini port of Aden on the Gulf of Aden where the Cole was famously attacked by an al-Qaeda suicide boat in October 2000. The destroyer nearly sank and the attack killed 17 sailors and wounded 39. It remains the deadliest attack on a US Navy ship by a terrorist group.

Saudi Arabia has been engaged in a hot war in Yemen since early 2015, supporting the Sunni government of Abdrabbuh Mansur Hadi against Shia Houthi rebels led by former president Ali Abdullah Saleh and backed by Iran. The political situation is compounded by the presence of al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), who hold about a quarter of Yemen’s mid-eastern section.

The country is in turmoil. According to a November report by the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, more than 10,000 Yemenis have been killed in the civil war, and out of a total population of about 27 million, nearly 19 million are defined as being in need of humanitarian or protection assistance.

The conflict in Yemen’s western region, held by the Houthis, has been spreading to the sea as government forces have begun a series of offensives to retake seaports on the Red Sea. According to news reports, the Saudi-led coalition began an offensive Jan. 6 to drive the Houthis from the coast. As they have fled, Houthis reportedly have mined harbors with sea mines and shore facilities with land mines.

On Jan. 29, the US staged a raid in Yemen in an attempt to gather intelligence on AQAP activities. One US Navy SEAL was killed in the action, which turned into a bloody fire fight with multiple casualties on the ground and ended with the loss of an MV-22 Osprey tiltrotor aircraft. While it is not clear where the SEALs were staged from, the extracted SEAL Team Six reportedly was flown to the Makin Island, where the wounded sailor died.

President Trump termed the raid a “winning mission” that killed 14 al-Qaeda and garnered useful intelligence. Others criticized the action, with the New York Times reporting that “almost everything that could go wrong did.” There are conflicting reports as to whether or not the Yemeni government has withdrawn permission for US special forces to operate in the country.

Nevertheless, incidents in the Red Sea have visibly been on the rise. On Oct. 9, for the first time in history, a hostile surface-to-surface missile was fired at US Navy ships as three units were operating in the southern Red Sea. The destroyer Mason destroyed one of the missiles while another missed. Several other incidents reportedly had taken place in the days leading up to the direct missile attack.

On Oct. 13, the destroyer Nitze retaliated and launched Tomahawk cruise missiles against three coastal radar sites in Houthi-controlled territory.

Earlier, on Oct. 1, Houthi forces carried out a devastating missile attack on an aluminum ferry operated by the United Arab Emirates. The vessel, once operated by the US Navy as the high speed vessel Swift, had to be abandoned and was largely burned out.

Security agencies also report a growing number of attacks on merchant ships in the region by small boats firing rocket-propelled grenades and automatic weapons.

While the Pentagon declined to respond directly to queries for this story, Defense Department spokesman Capt. Jeff Davis told Stars and Stripes on Feb. 4 that the stationing of the Cole in the Red Sea was “for no other reason than to respond to Bab el Mandeb incidents.”

“When we see things like what happened to the Saudi frigate earlier this week take place it gives us great pause," Davis told Stars and Stripes. "This is on top of other things we've seen -- to include the well-known missile attempts against U.S. ships last fall -- we've seen evidence that the Houthis are laying mines in the waters outside at least one of their ports. We officially have great concern for the freedom of navigation there.”

The region around the Bab el Mandeb and the Gulf of Aden is full of international naval and military activity. The European Union has maintained regular patrols against Somali-based pirates in the Gulf of Aden since late 2008, using warships from Belgium, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Romania, Spain, Sweden, the Ukraine and the United Kingdom. China, Russia and Iran have maintained their own anti-piracy patrols, and China is building a small base in Djibouti to support the operations.

The US-led multi-national naval partnership of the Combined Maritime Forces provides two major operating elements around the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden. Combined Task Force 150 (CTF 150) is responsible for maritime security and counter-terrorism, while CTF 151 is tasked with counter-piracy. Another unit, CTF 152, handles security operations in the Persian Gulf. There are 31 member nations in the CMF.

A number of nations, including the US, have military activities of various sizes in Djibouti, on the western side of the Bab el Mandeb across from Yemen. US Marine forces aboard deployed amphibious ready groups – including the ARG centered on the Makin Island – routinely exercise in and around Djibouti.

Saudi Arabia is reported as in the final stages of an agreement with Djibouti to establish a base there, and Arab media report that the United Arab Emirates, a key ally of Saudi Arabia in the anti-Houthi conflict, is building a military base at the Red Sea port of Assab in Eritrea.

James Pothecary, an analyst with Allan & Associates, writing in November for the Center for International Maritime Security, noted that “any concerted naval action in the area will face determined resistance. Unlike the Somali pirates of the late 2000s, Houthi fighters are ideologically motivated, trained, battle-hardened, and well-armed. Moreover, they have freedom of movement in areas of south-western Yemen under their control.

“While international naval power, supported by air power and special forces, will likely be able to contain the threat, full elimination of Houthi capability is an unrealistic objective without substantially more committed resourcing,” Pothecary wrote for CIMSEC.

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Jura said:

Monday at 9:52 PM

related is USNI News Video Shows Houthi Boat Attack on Saudi Frigate

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US admiral fears Yemen civil war widening into the Red Sea
ABU DHABI, United Arab Emirates — The Houthi boat that attacked and hit a Saudi frigate Jan. 30 in the Red Sea, reported earlier as a suicide boat, was instead carried out by an unmanned, remote-controlled craft filled with explosives, the US Navy’s top officer in the Mideast said.

“Our assessment is that it was an unmanned, remote-controlled boat of some kind,” Vice Adm. Kevin Donegan, commander of the Bahrain-based US Fifth Fleet and head of US Naval Forces Central Command, told Defense News in an interview here Saturday.

The attack on the frigate Al Madinah appears to be the first confirmed use of the weapon which, Donegan said, represents a wider threat than that posed by suicide boats and shows foreign interests are aiding the Houthis.

Donegin is concerned “first that it is in the hands of someone like the Houthis. That’s not an easy thing to develop. There have been many terrorist groups that have tried to develop that, it’s not something that was just invented by the Houthis. There’s clearly support there coming from others, so that’s problematic.

“The second is the explosive boat piece — you don’t need suicide attackers to do a suicide-like attack. There are certain terrorists that do things and they get martyrs to go and do it. But there are many others that don’t want to martyr themselves in making attacks like that and that’s pretty much where the Houthis are. So it makes that kind of weaponry, which would normally take someone suicidal to use, now able to be used by someone who’s not going to martyr themselves.”

The unmanned boat was likely supplied by Iran, Donegan said.

“I don’t know that it’s Iranian-built, but I believe that it’s production in some way was supported by Iran,” Donegan said.

“Here’s how I connect those dots. About a year ago we began and were successful in interdicting about four weapons shipments of things going to Yemen,” he said, noting that three of the shipments were intercepted by coalition partners of the US, while one shipment was intercepted by a US ship.

“We allowed the United Nations access to all the weapons we got from one of the interdictions, and they published quite an extensive report,” Donegan said. “They said specifically that the weapons came from Iran and were destined for Yemen in violation of UN Security Council resolutions. That’s not my assessment, that’s the United Nations assessment.

“Secondly, the other three weapon shipments that were interdicted were examined by another independent group, the [U.K.-based] Conflict Armament Research. They’ve also put out a report that almost said exactly the same thing. And they did this by analysis of the weapons and serial numbers and where they were manufactured and the instruction manuals, and the GPS waypoints of the systems.

“So we know that weapons were shipped from Iran to Yemen. The question is at what level and how many, etc. We know what was in the weapon inventory of Yemen before the conflict started, and the Yemenis didn’t have a weapon that could range Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. That’s an 800-kilometer ballistic missile shot, whereas the Scud missile, about 200 kilometers is what it can do. They had a rudimentary coastal defense missile. But most of their systems had atrophied. So they’re being supported by Iran. Maybe there’s others supporting them, I don’t know. But for certain these things aren’t indigenous, there are parts and components that need to be coming from other places to make them effective like this.”

The Houthis in western Yemen along the Red Sea coast have been widening the Yemeni civil war to threaten the large amount of international commercial shipping that passes through the Bab el Mandeb strait at the southern end of the Red Sea. Virtually all maritime traffic in and out of the Suez Canal between the Mediterranean Sea and Indian Ocean passes through the strait.

“This is a region that is always in conflict,” Donegan said. “We’re not here to maintain peace and stability. On the contrary, there are four, sometimes five active conflicts in the region going on. Most of our time is spent trying to get more peace and stability in the region.

“But over the 15 years of fighting we’ve been doing on land, we haven’t had the conflict spill into the maritime. What bothers me about Yemen is that you’ve seen this conflict spilled into the maritime in several places. The problem is the potential impact on the flow of commerce. And that’s not just our interest, it’s a global interest.

“What we have now is that non-nation-states get access to nation-state-like weapon systems, and that impacts the flow of commerce. You saw that in the attack on the motor vessel Swift on the 1 st of October, and you saw that again with this explosive boat that was used against the Saudi frigate Al-Madinah. My fear is they move to use that [weapon] against any kind of commerce that flows through [the southern Red Sea]. And even if they don’t intend to, my fear is that it becomes a collateral damage, because they’re not so good at identifying targets and things like that.

“With about 64 vessels a day travelling through there, the Bab al Mandeb, almost all with energy cargoes, any issue of misidentification or misapplication of one of these weapon systems could become an issue with commerce, and that’s what we have to avoid. I

n the end what we’d like to see is that conflict back into the land mass and not out into where we have commercial traffic.”

In January, Saudi Arabia, supporting the elected government of Yemen, began an offensive intended to drive the Houthis from the coastal regions along the Red Sea. The offensive has only been partially successful, and reports in the Arab media indicate the Houthis, as they evacuate an area, leave behind land and sea mines. There are fears that the sea mines, most of Soviet manufacture, are old and can break loose, drifting out into commercial shipping lanes.

“That’s exactly the part of my worry about this conflict spilling into the maritime,” Donegan said. “It doesn’t matter to us whether it’s mines in the water or explosive boats in the water, that’s a problem for me.

“We’ve often talked in the past about the Strait of Hormuz being closed up. But the Bab al Mandeb and the Red Sea are so important for a couple of reasons. For one you have this flow of commerce that goes up to the Suez Canal. Anything going through the Suez Canal is feeding the Egyptian economy. We really can’t afford to have a reduction to the Eqyptian economy. It’s fragile and we can’t have that.

“The other piece that happens is, diverting around the Red Sea and Bab al Mandeb is something potentially that the oil industry may be able to accommodate with some initial cost, but industries like liquid natural gas, there is no excess capacity in the transporting of it, nor is there excess storage capacity at the destinations. So any kind of slowdown in traffic through the Bab al Mandeb is going to have a pretty quick impact on both the region but also on the global supply of energy. Because of that just-in-time liquid natural gas piece, there’ll be a delay before the oil will be able to move in a different direction, and then you’ll have the impact on the local economies that are getting their money – especially Egypt.”

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Asked if the US is stepping up interdiction actions, Donegan said, “No. But there are UN Security Council resolutions that compel all the nations that can to not allow weapons to go to Yemen. Very clear UN Security Council resolutions. So all the nations that can are compelled to not use their territory or waters for that use.

“We haven’t changed what we do. We’ve always had a focus on not allowing the maritime to be used for illicit purposes, especially those areas where we have UN Security Council resolutions that ask us to do that work.”

Asked if the United States was preparing military operations against the Houthis, Donegan demurred.

“I don’t think I’d be able to answer that for a whole bunch of reasons,” he said. “But suffice to say we’re certainly concerned about it and we’re doing prudent planning, not just ourselves but with our allies and partners in the region. We’re really concerned now more than before because of this spillage into the maritime. And it doesn’t have to be a military solution that gets to an end-state here.

“If we can get the factions in Yemen together to get back on the peace track then you can get in and clean out the weapons that are there, the higher-end weapons that have gotten in there.

“My biggest concern now is you’ve got nation-state-like weapons in the hands of non-nation-states. It’s not in the hands of the duly-elected government of Yemen. Some of them because they were able to pick up inventories of other weapons, and some because they’ve been augmented.”

Donegan was also asked about the US commitment to the Gulf region, a perennial concern among the US partners here, particularly after the “America first” language in President Trump’s inaugural address.

“We’re absolutely committed to stay here,” Donegan declared. “There’s been no change in that in any way, shape or form, in my mind. We’re battling the readiness issues of our service, because we’ve used them pretty hard. But my headquarters is not going away. We’ll have our ships out here in the region. We’ll have the carrier strike group in and out. We still have permanently-homeported ships based here in the region. So we’re not stepping in any way away from the region.

And America first means we’re here because it’s in America’s interests. It doesn’t mean we’re going to run back home and protect in a defensive way. It means we’re going to be out and engaged so we can have influence in places, and where our interests are at stake we can be there when and where we’re needed. That is not changing. I’ve gotten zero indications of that.”

And he added, Defense Secretary Jim Mattis’ current visit to the region is “to emphasize those exact same things.”

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More than 30 refugees killed in helicopter attack on boat in Yemen
UN says it is 'appalled' by massacre as worsening conflict forces people to flee

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an hour ago

More than 30 Somali refugees have been killed in an attack on a boat off the coast of

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.

Coastguard authorities in the Houthi rebel stronghold of Hodeidah said a helicopter gunship attacked the vessel they were travelling on in the Red Sea.

Photos that were too graphic to publish showed the bodies of women and men in civilian clothes lying on top of one another in the partially destroyed boat, their belongings splattered with blood. Children were reported to be among the dead.

Mohamed al-Alay told Reuters the refugees, carrying official UNHCR documents, were on their way from

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to Sudan when they were attacked by an Apache helicopter near the Bab el-Mandeb strait.

The UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) said it was “deeply distressed” by the casualties and called for all parties in the Yemeni civil war to protect civilians in accordance with international law.

“UNHCR is appalled by this tragic incident, the latest in which civilians continue to disproportionately bear the brunt of conflict in Yemen,” a spokesperson said.

“UNHCR has been following up to provide urgent assistance and support to the survivors and to the families of those deceased.”

The agency warned that conditions in Yemen were continuing to deteriorate, forcing asylum seekers to leave the country and move north.

A sailor who had been operating the boat, Ibrahim Ali Zeyad, said 80 refugees had been rescued after the incident.

The boat was passing through waters between Yemen and Eritrea and Djibouti, which sits on Somalia's northern border.

It was not immediately clear who carried out the attack, although Saudi forces are known to deploy Apache helicopters as part of their air campaign in support of President Abdrabbuh Mansour Hadi.

The coastal province of Hodeidah has come under heavy bombardment in recent years as a stronghold of Houthi rebels, who are fighting the internationally-recognised government alongside forces loyal to former President Ali Abdullah Saleh.

Yemen's civil war, which is about to enter its third year of bloodshed, has allowed terrorist groups including Isis and al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula to seize territory and carry out attacks.

Despite violence that has left more than 10,000 people dead and 17 million facing starvation, African migrants seeking work in Saudi Arabia have continued using Yemen as a transit point.

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Jura said:

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Obama administration arms sales offers to Saudi top $115 billion: report

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