Yemen’s Houthi rebels fired an anti-ship cruise missile toward an American destroyer in the Red Sea on Sunday, but a US fighter jet shot it down in the latest attack roiling global shipping amid Israel’s war with Hamas in the Gaza Strip, officials said.

The attack marks the first US-acknowledged fire by the Houthis since America and allied nations began strikes Friday on the rebels following weeks of assaults on shipping in the Red Sea.

The Houthis have targeted that crucial corridor linking Asian and Mideast energy and cargo shipments to the Suez Canal onward to Europe over the Israel-Hamas war, attacks that threaten to widen that conflict into a regional conflagration.

  • @TheDoozer
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    2810 months ago

    I’m getting “suicide by cop” vibes from these guys. What do they hope to achieve other than getting wrecked when they’ve pissed the US off enough?

    • sylver_dragon
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      1610 months ago

      They probably want the same thing the Taliban got: their own country where they can terrorize the local population without any real repercussions.

    • @100_percent_a_bot
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      410 months ago

      Their clearly in it for the 72 virgins… Or 72 fruits, depending on the translation they subscribe to

      • @jordanlundM
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        910 months ago

        This is being reported as “Islamophobia”, but while OPs language does trivialize the issue, it’s a SURPRISINGLY deep topic. There’s a good article here:

        https://www.theguardian.com/books/2002/jan/12/books.guardianreview5

        The tl;dr is if you translate that part of the Qur’an assuming the source language is Arabic, you get your “72 virgins” or possibly “72 angels”.

        On the other hand, if you translate it assuming Syriac instead of Arabic, it comes out “white raisins” of “crystal clarity”.

        This is one of the many difficulties in translating the Qur’an. It has multiple, layered meanings that are difficult to relay accurately in English.

        So I’m going to leave this comment alone, it’s an un-necessary trivialization of a serious topic, but not necessarily Islamophobia.

        • @100_percent_a_bot
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          -210 months ago

          Oh come on, what’s even Islamophobic about this? I could have made a joke like this about any other religion without being something phobic