Urgent action must be taken in the Red Sea to stop attacks on merchant shipping by Yemen’s Houthis, leading industry groups said on Wednesday, after the sinking of a second ship.
\nIran-aligned Houthi militants first launched drone and missile strikes on the important trade route in November in what they say is solidarity with Palestinians in Gaza. In more than 70 attacks, they have also seized one vessel and its crew and killed at least three seafarers.
\nThe Greek-owned Tutor coal carrier attacked by Yemen’s Houthi militants in the Red Sea last week has sunk, salvagers confirmed on Wednesday.
\nThe vessel was struck with missiles and an explosive-laden remote-controlled boat, according to sources.
\nInternational naval forces have been deployed to provide mainly defensive support for ships still sailing through the Red Sea, but the attacks have increased significantly.
\nInsurance industry sources said on Wednesday there was also mounting concern over the use of attack drone boats by the Houthis.
\nThere have been 10 Houthi strikes so far in June compared with five in May, “The first successful use of an unmanned surface vessel represents a new challenge for commercial shipping within an already complex environment,” he added.
\nInsurance industry sources said that additional war risk premiums, paid when vessels sail through the Red Sea, had hovered close to 0.7% of the value of a ship in recent days from around 1% earlier this year.
\nThey added that with a second ship sinking and the losses likely to emerge from that, rates are likely to firm up, adding hundreds of thousands of dollars of extra costs to every voyage.
\nShips must divert around southern Africa, which is the best way to protect seafarers, said Stephen Cotton, General Secretary with the International Transport Workers’ Federation, the leading seafarer’s union.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Urgent action must be taken in the Red Sea to stop attacks on merchant shipping by Yemen’s Houthis, leading industry groups said on Wednesday, after the sinking of a second ship. Iran-aligned Houthi militants first launched drone and missile strikes on the important trade route in November in what they say is solidarity with Palestinians …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":25530,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13,25],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-25526","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-international","category-news-2"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25526","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25526"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25526\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":25531,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25526\/revisions\/25531"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/25530"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25526"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25526"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25526"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}