Danish shipping giant Maersk on Friday ordered its ships to no longer pass through the strategic Bab al-Mandab strait “until further notice”, after new attacks by Yemen’s Houthi rebels against a backdrop of war in Gaza.
The move comes after the Houthis, close to Iran, warned they would target ships sailing in the Red Sea off the coast of Yemen with links to Israel, in response to the war between Israel and the Palestinian Islamist movement. Hamas in the Gaza Strip.
On Friday, the rebel group claimed to have carried out “a military operation against two container ships, MSC Alanya and MSC Palatium III”.
The ships were targeted by two missiles “after their crews refused to respond to calls from the Yemeni naval forces”, said their military spokesperson, Yehya Sari, during a demonstration in support of the Palestinians organized in Sanaa, the capital that they have controlled since 2014.
According to the US Middle East Military Command (Centcom), the MSC Alanya was only threatened, without being hit, while the Palatium was hit by one of the two ballistic missiles fired.
The maritime intelligence company Ambrey had indicated earlier that the two ships, one of which it said was heading towards Jeddah, in Saudi Arabia, had probably been threatened because their owner, the Swiss shipowner MSC, had “cooperated with Israel”. .
“Concrete threat”
Another ship, the Al Jasrah, a container ship flying the flag of Liberia owned by the German company Hapag-Lloyd, was hit by a drone “launched from territory controlled by the Houthis” and a fire broke out before being destroyed. be turned off, Centcom also said in a press release on X.
A Hapag-Lloyd spokesperson confirmed the attack to AFP, specifying that there were no injuries and that the boat had continued its route to Singapore, from the Greek port of Piraeus.
According to Ambrey, the German shipowner has offices in the Israeli ports of Ashdod, Haifa and Tel Aviv.
Hapag-Lloyd also announced on Friday that it was suspending crossings of its container ships on the Red Sea at least until Monday.
On Thursday, rebels claimed responsibility for an attack on the container ship Maersk Gibraltar, but the missile missed its target, according to a US official.
“Houthi attacks on civilian merchant ships in the Red Sea must stop immediately,” German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock responded on Friday.
Visiting Israel, White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan denounced “a concrete threat to free navigation” in the Red Sea.
“The United States is working with the international community and its partners in the region to confront this threat,” he added in Tel Aviv, after meeting Israeli officials.
” Escalation “
Iranian Defense Minister Mohammed Reza Ashtiani warned on Wednesday against a possible deployment of multinational forces in the Red Sea, which Tehran considers its zone of influence. “If they make such an irrational decision, they will face extraordinary problems,” he told the official ISNA agency.
Saudi Foreign Minister Faisal bin Farhane, for his part, said he was concerned about “the possibility of escalation”, stressing that the region “did not need another conflict”, during a press conference in Oslo.
Some 20,000 ships travel each year on this maritime route linking the Mediterranean to the Indian Ocean.
In recent weeks, the Houthis have increased attacks near the strategic Bab al-Mandab Strait, which separates the Arabian Peninsula from Africa and through which 40% of international trade passes.
Several missiles and drones were shot down by US and French warships patrolling the area.
The Houthis said Friday that boats would not be targeted off Yemen if they met their directives, but that ships bound for Israeli ports would be “prevented from sailing in the Arabian and Red Seas until the entry of food and medicine that our brothers in the Gaza Strip need.
According to Mohammed Albasha, Middle East specialist at the American analysis center Navanti Group, the latest incidents however show that “the Houthis are ready to target anything associated with Israel”, whatever the links.