Yemen’s Houthi rebels said Wednesday they would free the crew of the Galaxy Leader commercial ship they hijacked 14 months ago as part of their campaign of attacks in the Red Sea to support Hamas in its war against Israel.

The decision follows an announcement by the Iran-backed rebel group on Sunday that it would scale back its attacks, following a ceasefire in the Gaza conflict that came into effect at the weekend.

The Houthis took the Galaxy Leader to the Yemeni port of Al-Hudaydah and have been holding its crew hostage ever since. The World Cargo News website reported in November that Crew of 25 members they included citizens of the Philippines, Ukraine, Bulgaria, Mexico and Romania.

A senior Houthi official, Nasser Al-Din Amer, said on social media that the detained crew members would be freed on Wednesday. Yemen’s rebel-linked Al-Masirah television channel said the decision was ordered by Houthi leader Abdul-Malik Badr al-Din al-Houthi and was coordinated with Hamas and mediated by Oman.

The release could not be independently confirmed.

The Galaxy Leader, which is designed to transport vehicles, flies the Bahamas flag and was shown on Wednesday as “stopped” in the Red Sea and out of satellite navigation range. according to MarineTraffica ship tracking app and website that provides real-time information on vessels around the world.

The capture of the ship, which was on its way to India from Turkey, was one of the biggest daring naval operations by the Houthis and came at the start of their campaign to support Hamas, which attacked Israel on October 7, 2023, sparking the Gaza war.

At the time, the Houthis threatened to target Israeli-flagged, owned, and operated ships sailing through the Red Sea. After the Galaxy Leader was seized, a Houthi spokesman announced that the kidnapping was a show of support for the “oppressed Palestinian people.”

While the Israeli military said there were no Israelis on board the Galaxy Leader, it appears that an Israeli billionaire, Rami Ungar, was at one point the beneficial owner of the company that owns the ship, according to the Paradise Papers. a major leak of classified documents which in 2017 exposed the hidden world of wealth and property. The beneficial owner of a company is a person who controls it, owns more than a quarter of it or derives significant economic benefit from it.

The Houthis’ campaign against Israel has disrupted maritime traffic on one of the world’s most important shipping routes, forcing many vessels to make the much longer journey around the Cape of Good Hope at the southern tip of Africa.

In recent months, the group has also launched a series of rocket attacks on Israel. Most of the missiles were intercepted before they reached Israeli territory, but the Israeli military responded with a series of airstrikes against rebel-linked targets in Yemen.

Houthi spokesman Mohammed Abdulsalam, he said social media on Sunday that support for the Palestinian cause would remain a top priority even after the ceasefire. The Houthis said they would stop targeting all ships “after the full implementation of all phases” of the ceasefire agreement. But they said they would continue to target vessels owned by Israeli individuals or entities or flying the Israeli flag.

But in a Sunday email sent by a A group associated with the Houthis which communicates with the shipping industry, the Houthis warned that if the United States or Britain directly attacked Yemen, they would continue to attack vessels linked to those countries.