The U.S.S. Mason is based at Mayport Naval Station. | USS Mason, Facebook
Published on November 27, 2023 at 12:13 pm
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The Mayport-based USS Mason seized five armed rebels late Sunday off the coast of Yemen after a tanker linked to Israel was attacked, according to the U.S. Navy.
In the middle of the USS Mason’s rescue mission, two missiles fired from Yemen landed near the warship in the Gulf of Aden off the Arabian Sea, the Navy said.
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The USS Mason, an Arleigh Burke-class Guided Missile Destroyer, responded to a distress call from the M/V Central Park reporting that five attackers had boarded it. Part of the Dwight D. Eisenhower Carrier Strike Group, the Mason demanded release of the vessel and the five fled the Central Park in a small boat, the Navy said.
The MASON pursued the attackers, who eventually surrendered. The task force was deployed due to a series of ship attacks linked to the Israel-Hamas war, the Navy said.
The Liberian-flagged Central Park, carrying phosphoric acid, is managed by Zodiac Maritime, which is part of Israeli billionaire Eyal Ofer’s Zodiac Group, according to NPR. Early Monday, Zodiac said the ship’s crew of 22 sailors from Bulgaria, Georgia, India, the Philippines, Russia, Turkey and Vietnam were unharmed.
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Yemen’s internationally recognized government blamed the Iranian-backed Houthi rebels for the attack in a statement carried by their state-run news agency, NPR reported.
“The Yemeni government has renewed its denunciation of the acts of maritime piracy carried out by the terrorist Houthi militias with the support of the Iranian regime, the most recent of which was the hijacking of the Central Park,” the statement read.
The attack on the Central Park came two days after a suspected Iranian drone attacked the CMA CGM Symi, a container ship owned by another Israeli billionaire, in the Indian Ocean, NPR said. Global shipping had increasingly been targeted as the Israel-Hamas war threatens to become a wider regional conflict, even after the current four-day truce halted fighting as Hamas exchanged hostages for Palestinian prisoners held by Israel.
Earlier in November, the Houthis seized a vehicle transport ship also linked to Israel in the Red Sea off Yemen. The rebels still hold the vessel off the port city of Hodeida.
Zodiac Maritime has been targeted previously, including a 2021 a drone attack assessed by the U.S. and other Western nations to have been carried out by Iran. That attack killed two crew members aboard Zodiac’s oil tanker Mercer Street off the coast of Oman, NPR reported.
