CAIRO – Another act of maritime violence has disrupted shipping lanes off Yemen’s volatile Red Sea coast, marking the latest security incident to threaten global trade routes near the conflict-battered nation, according to statements from British military officials.
The United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations (UKMTO), a body that monitors maritime safety across the region, confirmed the Sunday attack took place off the coast of Hodeida, a major Yemeni coastal city currently held by Iran-aligned Houthi rebels. The targeted cargo ship alerted authorities that it was “under attack by unknown armed assailants” roughly 30 nautical miles, or 55 kilometers, southwest of Hodeida, with official investigations into the incident now underway.
As of initial reporting, no militant or criminal group has stepped forward to claim responsibility for the assault. Houthi spokespeople have also not yet responded to requests for comment on the attack, despite the rebel group recently issuing public threats to resume targeted attacks on commercial shipping passing through Yemeni waters – a campaign they paused in recent months.
Prior to this latest incident, the Houthis launched a months-long wave of drone and missile strikes against commercial vessels transiting the waters adjacent to the Bab al-Mandab Strait, a narrow strategic chokepoint at the southern mouth of the Red Sea that the rebels control portions of. That sustained campaign, launched in solidarity with Palestinians during the ongoing Gaza war, pushed major global shipping companies to re-route their fleets around the Cape of Good Hope at the southern tip of Africa rather than traversing the Red Sea and Suez Canal – a shift that has added thousands of miles of travel, increased fuel costs, and disrupted global supply chains.
This new attack comes amid a broader resurgence of maritime criminal activity across the region. Further east in the Gulf of Aden, Somali pirate operations have ramped up in recent weeks, underscoring the growing threat to commercial shipping across the Horn of Africa’s key waterways. On July 1, suspected pirates carried out an assault on a vessel 76 nautical miles, or 140 kilometers, south of Balhaf, a port town in southeastern Yemen. According to UKMTO’s account of that earlier incident, four armed assailants traveling in a small speedboat carried out the attack, leaving minor damage to the targeted ship’s bridge before withdrawing.