The US military has said that it has destroyed four Houthi nautical drones and two aerial ones over the Red Sea off Yemen, AFP reports.

The US Central Command (Centcom) said in a statement on Thursday night that its forces had “destroyed four Iranian-backed Houthi uncrewed surface vessels (USV) in the Red Sea and two uncrewed aerial systems (UAS) over the Red Sea” in the past 24 hours.

Centcom said the day before that it had destroyed “one ground control station and one command and control node” in a Houthi-controlled area of Yemen.

This week, a merchant ship whose hull was breached in an earlier Huthi attack, the M/V Tutor, was believed to have sunk in the Red Sea after its crew was evacuated, according to a maritime security agency run by the British navy.

A Filipino sailor aboard the vessel was killed in the attack. A Sri Lankan crew member on another ship, the M/V Verbena, was seriously injured in a separate attack, and the vessel had to be abandoned.