Six armed men boarded a tanker 136 nautical miles east of Al Mukalla on 20 August and redirected it toward Somalia, UK Maritime Trade Operations (UKMTO, the British naval desk that collects merchant shipping incident reports) said in a warning notice.1 Al Mukalla sits on Yemen's southern coast, on the Gulf of Aden approach that feeds shipping into the Red Sea and out toward the Indian Ocean.
A boarding party that steers a tanker toward the Somali coast wants the ship intact, which is not what a standoff attack is for. Houthi missiles killed six aboard a cargo vessel in the Bab el-Mandeb on 11 August, an attack meant to stop a hull rather than take one. UKMTO's notice carries the position and the heading, and describes the boarders only as six armed men.
Position matters here as much as method. Those 136 nautical miles put the vessel on the open Gulf of Aden run, outside the strait of Hormuz altogether and east of the Bab el-Mandeb narrows where this year's attacks on shipping have concentrated. A tanker taken on that stretch has to be sailed somewhere and held, which needs shore support and takes days, and that gives owners and navies a longer window to respond than a missile allows.
