Yemen's Houthis say they targeted oil tanker Pollux

Yemen's Iran-aligned Houthis said on Saturday that they had fired missiles at oil tanker Pollux, which U.S. officials said the previous day had been hit by a missile.

The U.S. State Department said on Friday that the Pollux, a Panamanian-flagged tanker carrying crude oil bound for India, was hit by a missile on its port side.

"The naval forces of the Yemeni Armed Forces carried out a targeting operation against a British oil ship (Pollux) in the Red Sea with a large number of appropriate naval missiles, and the strikes were accurate and direct", the Houthis' military spokesperson, Yahya Sarea, said in a statement.

The Houthis have launched repeated drone and missile attacks against international commercial shipping in the Red Sea and the Bab al-Mandab Strait since mid-November, saying they are acting in solidarity with Palestinians as Israel wages war on Hamas.