What happened

UK Maritime Trade Operations classified Warning 110-26 as an attack after receiving a report that a stationary cargo vessel in the southern Red Sea near al-Makha (Mocha) had been hit by an unknown projectile; it did not name the vessel. Yemeni and international reporting subsequently identified the ship as the Tihamah, a 63-metre, Tanzanian-flagged, Egyptian-owned multipurpose vessel built in 2024 and licensed to carry passengers and commercial goods between Aden, Djibouti, Somalia and Socotra; it was en route to Mokha port with 11 crew (Pakistani and Indonesian nationals) when it was hit. Yemen's Transport Ministry said Houthi forces fired three ballistic missiles at the ship in a first strike that caused a fire, significant damage and an initial reported toll of four dead. As government coastguard and armed-forces personnel evacuated the dead and wounded roughly three hours later, the Houthis fired an additional ballistic missile at the rescue site, killing at least two more people, including two Yemeni rescuers (one named by officials as Abkar Muhammad Mahmoud), for a combined toll of six killed and ten wounded (seven of them crew). Yemen's Transport Ministry and Pakistan's Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Ishaq Dar both said three Pakistani nationals and one Indonesian national were among the dead; two Yemeni coastguard/rescue personnel were killed in the second strike. Yemen's coastguard separately said it intercepted and destroyed a Houthi 'booby-trapped' drone boat that approached the Tihamah about three hours after the missile strikes. Al Jazeera reported this was the first shipping-related deaths linked to the Houthis since the US-Israel war on Iran began on 28 February 2026. The Houthi-run Saba agency claimed the target was a Saudi military-cargo vessel and did not name it; that claim is disputed by Yemen's government and is not independently verified. The International Maritime Organization's secretary-general condemned the attack. This is the same underlying event UKMTO first reported (previously recorded here as an unidentified vessel); this record has been updated with the vessel's identity and the confirmed double-tap sequence rather than duplicated. It is separate from the missile and drone attacks on al-Makha city and port on 9 August.

When cited sources give different casualty, damage or spill figures for this event, they’re reported side by side above rather than merged into one number. See how confidence levels work.