Category: 2. World

Two seafarers on a bulk carrier have been killed in a drone and speedboat attack in the Red Sea blamed on Yemen’s Houthi rebels, the second incident in a day after months of calm.

The Red Sea, which passes Yemen’s coast, is a critical waterway for oil and commodities but traffic has dropped since the Iran-aligned Houthi militia began targeting ships in November 2023 in what they said was solidarity with Palestinians in Gaza.

The deaths on the Liberian-flagged, Greek-operated Eternity C are the first involving shipping in the Red Sea since June last year and bring the number of killed in attacks on vessels there to six. The Houthis have not claimed responsibility for the incident but Yemen’s exiled government and the European Union said it was the group’s work.

Hours before the attack, the Houthis claimed they had sunk another Liberia-flagged, Greek-operated bulk carrier, the MV Magic Seas, off south-west Yemen on Sunday.

The crew were rescued by a passing merchant vessel and arrived safely in Djibouti on Monday, port authorities said.

“Just as Liberia was processing the shock and grief of the attack against Magic Seas, we received a report that Eternity C again has been attacked, attacked horribly and causing the death of two seafarers,” Liberia’s delegation told a London session of the United Nations shipping agency, the International Maritime Organization.

Since November 2023, the Houthis have disrupted commerce by launching hundreds of drones and missiles at vessels in the Red Sea, saying they were targeting ships linked to Israel.

The Houthis reached a ceasefire with the US in May but say they will keep attacking ships connected with Israel.

Arsenio Dominguez, the IMO’s secretary general, said on Tuesday. “After several months of calm, the resumption of deplorable attacks in the Red Sea constitutes a renewed violation of international law and freedom of navigation. Innocent seafarers and local populations are the main victims of these attacks and the pollution they cause.”

The Eternity C and Magic Seas were part of commercial fleets whose sister vessels have made calls to Israeli ports over the past year.

Ellie Shafik of Vanguard Tech, a UK-based maritime risk management company, said: “The pause in Houthi activity did not necessarily indicate a change in underlying intent. As long as the conflict in Gaza persists, vessels with affiliations, both perceived and actual, will continue to face elevated risks.”

At least two other crew members were injured on Eternity C and the vessel was listing, according to its operator, Cosmoship Management.

Eternity C and its crew – 21 Filipinos and one Russian – were attacked with sea drones and rocket-propelled grenades fired from speedboats, maritime security sources said.

Filipino seafarers, who form one of the world’s largest pools of merchant mariners, should exercise their right to refuse to sail in “high-risk, war-like” areas, their country’s department of migrant workers said on Tuesday.

Red Sea shipping has declined by about 50% from normal levels since the first Houthi attacks in 2023, according to Jakob Larsen of the shipping association, Bimco.

The security expert said: “This reduction in traffic has persisted due to the ongoing unpredictability of the security situation. As such, Bimco does not anticipate the recent attacks will significantly alter current shipping patterns.”

Monday’s attack on Eternity C, 50 nautical miles south-west of the Yemeni port of Hodeidah, was the second on merchant vessels in the region since November 2024, according to an official at the EU’s Operation Aspides, which helps protect Red Sea shipping.

The German foreign ministry summoned the Chinese ambassador in Berlin on Tuesday after a Chinese warship used a laser to target a German aircraft taking part in Aspides.

The death toll from catastrophic flooding in Texas surged past 100 on Monday, as rescue teams waded through wreckage and rising waters in a desperate search for those still missing after days of relentless downpours.

Among the dead were at least 27 girls and counsellors who were staying at a youth summer camp on a river when disaster struck over the Fourth of July holiday weekend.

Forecasters have warned of more flooding as rain falls on saturated ground, complicating recovery efforts involving helicopters, boats and dogs, as the number of victims is expected to rise still.

President Donald Trump is planning to visit Texas on Friday, the White House said, as it slammed critics claiming his cuts to weather agencies had weakened warning systems.

“Blaming President Trump for these floods is a depraved lie, and it serves no purpose during this time of national mourning,” Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters Monday.

She said the National Weather Service, which The New York Times reported had several key roles in Texas unfilled before the floods, issued “timely and precise forecasts and warnings.”

Trump has described the floods that struck in the early hours of Friday as a “100-year catastrophe” that “nobody expected.”

The president, who previously said disaster relief should be handled at the state level, has signed a major disaster declaration, activating fresh federal funds and freeing up resources.

Tragedy

Kerr County in central Texas has been hardest hit of the counties devastated by the floods, with 56 adults and 28 children killed, according to the local sheriff´s office.

They include the 27 who had been staying at Camp Mystic, an all-girls Christian camp that was housing about 750 people when the floodwaters struck.

Camps are a beloved tradition in the long US summer holidays, with children often staying in woods, parks and other rural areas.

Texas Senator Ted Cruz described them as a chance to make “lifetime friends — and then suddenly it turns to tragedy.”

In a terrifying display of nature’s power, the rain-swollen waters of the Guadalupe River reached treetops and the roofs of cabins as girls at the camp slept.

Blankets, teddy bears and other belongings were caked in mud. Windows in the cabins were shattered, apparently by the force of the water.

Volunteers were helping search through debris from the river, with some motivated by personal connections to the victims.

“We’re helping the parents of two of the missing children,” Louis Deppe, 62, told AFP. “The last message they got was ‘We’re being washed away,’ and the phone went dead.”

Months’ worth of rain fell in a matter of hours on Thursday night into Friday, and rain has continued in bouts since then.

The Guadalupe surged around 26 feet (eight meters) — more than a two-story building — in just 45 minutes.

Flash floods, which occur when the ground is unable to absorb torrential rainfall, are not unusual in this region of south and central Texas, known colloquially as “Flash Flood Alley.”

Human-driven climate change has made extreme weather events such as floods, droughts and heat waves more frequent and more intense in recent years.

Did US government cuts contribute to flood tragedy?published at 00:52 British Summer Time 8 July

00:52 BST 8 July

Image source, Getty Images

By Ben Chu, Jake Horton, Kayla Epstein & Marco Silva

In the aftermath of the fatal Texas floods, some have hit out at the Trump administration’s spending and staffing cuts may have impeded the ability of the National Weather Service (NWS) to adequately predict the floods and raise the alarm.

But White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt has said: “These offices [of the NWS] were well staffed../ so any claims to the contrary are completely false.”

BBC Verify has examined the impact of cuts under Trump, and while there has been a reduction in the workforce at the NWS, experts who we spoke to said the staffing on hand for the Texas floods appears to have been adequate.

The Trump administration has proposed a 25% cut, external to the $6.1bn (£4.4bn) budget at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA), the agency which oversees the NWS, though these cuts do not take effect until October.

Staffing levels at the NWS have already been separately reduced by the Trump administration’s wider personnel cuts, which began in January.

In total, the NWS lost 600 of its 4,200 staff, says Tom Fahy, the director of the NWS union, causing several offices across the country to operate without the necessary staffing.

But Andy Hazelton, a climate scientist who modelled hurricane paths for the NOAA until he was fired during the layoffs in February, says of the Texas floods: “I don’t think the staffing issues contributed directly to this event. They got the watches and the warnings out.”

Among the current NWS job vacancies in Texas is a senior hydrologist, a scientist who specialises in flooding events, in the San Angelo office, NSW union director Fahy tells BBC Verify.

The San Antonio office also lacks a “warning coordinating meteorologist”, who coordinates communications between local forecasting offices and emergency management services in communities, Fahy says.

However, he notes that both offices had temporarily upped their staffing in anticipation of a dangerous weather event, which is typical in these circumstances.

Read BBC Verify’s investigation into whether spending cuts played a role in the flooding disaster: Did US government cuts contribute to the Texas tragedy?