SANAA (Dispatches) -- Yemeni forces have seized an Emirati-flagged cargo ship they said was engaged in “hostile acts” after Saudi Arabia claimed that it was carrying hospital equipment.
Saudi Brigadier General Turki al-Malki said that the ship named Rawabi was travelling from Yemen’s Socotra island, off the country’s south coast, and heading to the Saudi port of Jizan, when the Yemeni forces attacked it at midnight on Monday.
Malki claimed that the ship was carrying medical supplies after finishing a mission to set up a field hospital on the island.
But Yemeni military spokesperson Brigadier General Yahya Saree said the vessel was carrying military equipment and engaged in “hostile acts targeting the security and stability of Yemeni people”.
Saree added that the crew of “different nationalities” were still on board and the ship had entered Yemeni waters without permission.
Muhammad Abdulsalam, Yemen’s chief negotiator, also confirmed the vessel’s seizure on the group’s Al Masirah news website, describing it as an “unprecedented” operation for the movement.
“The successful and unprecedented operation comes within the framework of the legitimate right of the Yemeni nation to confront the Saudi-led aggression and siege,” he said.
Saudi Arabia has been waging a ruthless war on Yemen for the last seven years. The country is maintaining a blockade on the country which has blocked humanitarian shipments of food and medicine to the most impoverished Arab nation.
In 2016, Yemeni forces attacked the Emirati vessel SWIFT-1 in the Red Sea as it sailed between Emirati troops bases in Eritrea and Yemen.
The Emiratis said the SWIFT-1 carried medical equipment, but UN experts later disputed the claim, saying they were “unconvinced of its veracity”.
The seizure came after Yemeni military sources said the United Arab Emirates was constructing its second military airport, with the help of a team of foreign military experts, on the strategic island of Socotra.
They told Yemen News Portal website that the experts had started geological mapping in the coastal town of Hadibu.
The UAE’s construction of a new military airport on the Socotra island was in line with the Persian Gulf Arab state’s efforts to expand the activities of Emirati intelligence agencies and institutions in the area, they added.
Home to some 60,000 people, Socotra overlooks the Bab el-Mandeb Strait, a main shipping route that connects the Red Sea to the Gulf of Aden and the Arabian Sea. It has also a unique ecosystem.
The French-language news outlet JForum said in August 2020 that the occupying regime of Israel, in cooperation with the UAE, was planning to build intelligence-gathering bases on the Socotra island.
The purpose of the bases, according to the report, was to monitor Saudi-led forces waging a war on Yemen.
Socotra has been a source of tension between the UAE and Saudi Arabia, which have been vying for control of the resource-rich island.
UAE-backed separatists of the so-called Southern Transitional Council (STC) took control of Socotra in June 2020, in a move described by the administration of fugitive former Yemeni president, Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi, as “a full-fledged coup”.