Iran-Backed Houthis Blow Up Oil Tanker Dumping 150,000 Tonnes of Oil into the Red Sea

If you are old enough to be remember the Exxon Valdez oil spill, you will recall the massive media frenzy declaring the spill a major environmental disaster that made worldwide headlines in the spring of 1989. It went on daily for months. Media screaming calling for blood. The left went after Exxon with a vengeance. It was an accident but you’d never have known it. Serial killers have gotten kinder treatment.

The Valdez spilled 37,000 tonnes of crude oil into the ocean.

Fast forward 35 years to a cowed West, an Islamic group blows up an oil tanker dumping 150,000 tonnes of crude oil into the Red Sea and it barely gets a headline. The Greek-flagged MV Sounion was reportedly hit by at least four projectiles as men in several small boats opened fire on the vessel about 90 miles off the coast of the Yemeni port city of Hodeida.

Iran needs its ass handed to them. Instead Biden/Harris funds them.

The Exxon Valdez oil spill was one of the worst ecologic disasters and oil spills in modern history.

The tanker spilled 37,000 tonnes tonnes of crude oil off the Alaskan coast.

Today, the Houthis blew up a Greek-flagged oil tanker with 150 000 tonnes of crude oil in the Red Sea pic.twitter.com/IBqKORGv1t

— Visegrád 24 (@visegrad24) August 23, 2024

Oil tanker explosion claimed by Houthis threatens Red Sea pollution

Iran-backed group posts video of blaze aboard vessel carrying 150,000 tonnes of crude

Parts of the Red Sea are facing a significant pollution risk after Yemen’s Houthis blew up a crippled tanker and its crude oil cargo in the middle of the strategic waterway.

The Iran-backed group on Friday posted videos showing their forces’ deliberate blowing up of the Greek-owned oil tanker Sounion, whose crew had been forced to abandon ship after a series of attacks by the Houthis on Wednesday.

The EU’s Operation Aspides naval force had warned on Thursday that the drifting, abandoned vessel and its cargo of 150,000 tonnes of crude oil represented a “navigational and environmental hazard” and urged against any action that would worsen the risk.

The blowing up of the ship marks a new tactic for the Houthis. Since the group began its campaign against international shipping last November, it has sunk two ships — the Rubymar, attacked in February, and the Tutor, attacked in June. However, it has not previously deliberately blown up an abandoned ship.

Neither the Rubymar nor the Tutor was carrying a liquid cargo and there were no reports of serious pollution.

The UK’s Maritime Trade Operations office reported before the Houthis posted their video that three fires had been observed on the ship. That would be consistent with the video posted on a Houthi X account on Friday evening. It showed huge explosions ripping through a vessel bearing the name “Delta Tankers”, the Sounion’s Greece-based owners. The ship was attacked in the middle of the Red Sea, 77 nautical miles west of the Houthi-controlled port of Hodeidah.

The Houthis’ spokesman posted the footage with words describing it as showing the Yemeni Navy — the name the group gives to its own naval forces — burning the Sounion. The post said its owners had violated the Houthis’ bans on using ports in “occupied Palestine”, as they call Israel.

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