Footage shows armed guards destroying Houthi sea ‘drone’ boat, not Somali pirates

Somali pirates made a daring move to hijack a cargo ship in open waters but their plans quickly sank when they realized the vessel had its own heavily armed security team on board,” reads a Facebook post published on August 11, 2025.

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Screenshot of the false post, taken on August 19, 2025

The footage shows a cargo ship at sea and a small boat speeding towards it. Armed guards with protective gear on deck open fire, and the boat bursts into flames before reaching its target.

The video was also shared elsewhere on Facebook and Instagram with similar claims.

Somali pirates

Somali piracy emerged in the late 1990s, after the collapse of Somalia’s central government in 1991 left its waters unprotected. Armed groups exploited this vacuum, hijacking ships in the Gulf of Aden and wider Indian Ocean, holding crews for ransom (archived here).

At their peak in 2011, Somali pirates launched 237 attacks, while a World Bank estimate indicates piracy in 2010 cost the global economy $18 billion (archived here and  here).

However, sustained international naval patrols by the European Union Naval Force’s (EUNAVFOR) Operation Atalanta mission and the multinational Combined Task Force 151 (CTF-151), combined with onboard armed guards, helped significantly reduce the attacks by 2013 (archived here and here).

The last major incident occurred in 2017 when Somali pirates hijacked the Aris 13, a Comoros-flagged oil tanker (archived here).

More recently, piracy incidents off Somalia involving Yemeni fishing vessels and a dhow were reported in early 2025 (archived here).

However, social media posts with a video claiming to show Somali pirates under attack are false.

Houthi drone boat

AFP Fact Check conducted reverse image searches for keyframes from the video, and the results established that the clip is old and unrelated to Somali piracy.

The clip was featured in a July 23, 2024, article by The War Zone (TWZ) with the headline, “Ship Security Team Appears To Detonate Explosive-Laden Houthi Drone Boat With Gunfire” (archived here).

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Screenshot of the TWZ article, taken on August 19, 2025

According to the report, on July 20, security guards aboard a vessel identified as the Liberian-flagged container ship “Pumba”, fired about two dozen rounds at a Houthi USV roughly 64 nautical miles northwest of Al Mukha, Yemen, in the Red Sea, destroying it in an explosion.

A USV is a boat that operates on the surface of the sea without a human operator on-board. It can be controlled remotely or programmed to conduct missions and can be packed with explosives and designed to ram into ships before detonating (archived here).

Matching features, including the ship deck and exploding boat, can be seen in the clip shared on Facebook and a screenshot published by TWZ in 2024.

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Screenshots comparing the false post and the 2024 TWZ article, taken on August 19, 2025

The United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations (UKMTO), a Royal Navy-run organisation that acts as a link between military forces and commercial vessels in the Middle East and Indian Ocean region, issued a warning about the incident at the time (archived here and here).

UKMTO has received a report of an incident 64NM northwest of Al Mukha, Yemen,” reads the X post.

The Master reports two attacks: the first by an Uncrewed Aerial System (UAS), which exploded in close proximity to the vessel, resulting in minor damage; the second by an Uncrewed Surface Vessel (USV), which also exploded in close proximity to the vessel.

The incident was also reported by other media outlets (archived here and here).

Houthis, an armed group based in Yemen, have targeted several commercial vessels in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden since late 2023. The group has claimed that its actions are in solidarity with Palestinians in the Gaza Strip (archived here and here).