The coordinator of the American National Council, John Kirby, said that they are happy that the ship was not damaged, that no crew members were harmed, and that the missiles fell far from it.

He added, in statements to the ABC newspaper, that it is now difficult to know who was behind the attack on the aircraft carrier USS Mason.

In this context, American officials said that the US Department of Defense (the Pentagon) views the Houthi firing of two missiles at one of its destroyers in the Gulf of Aden (southern Yemen) as a major escalation and a serious threat by the group.

Fox News quoted American officials as saying, "The Houthis fired two ballistic missiles toward an American destroyer on Sunday evening in the Gulf of Aden."

They pointed out that “what happened in the Gulf of Aden came after the US Navy thwarted the militants’ hijacking of an Israeli oil tanker and the arrest of five of those militants.”

They noted that two American destroyers were tracking the two missiles that failed to hit the target and landed in the Gulf of Aden.

Earlier yesterday, Sunday, the US Central Command announced that the Houthi group fired two ballistic missiles towards a US naval destroyer in the Gulf of Aden, after it liberated an Israeli cargo ship that had been seized by gunmen in the Gulf of Aden, southern Yemen.

The command said - in a statement - that the two ballistic missiles landed in the Gulf of Aden at a distance of 10 nautical miles from the American destroyer, without causing damage or injuries to the destroyer.