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Maersk says Red Sea shipping disruptions having global effects

Wednesday, 17 July 2024 6:22 PM [ Last Update: Wednesday, 17 July 2024 6:52 PM ]

Footage from a video published by al-Masirah TV shows Yemeni forces dropping from a helicopter and seizing the Galaxy Leader cargo ship bound for Israeli occupied territories, in the Red Sea, on November 20, 2023.

Denmark’s giant shipping company Maersk says the disruptions to its container shipping via the Red Sea have extended to its entire ocean network amid Yemen’s attacks on Israel-bound vessels.

In a statement released on Wednesday, A.P. Moller-Maersk said, “The cascading impact of these disruptions extends beyond the primary affected routes, causing congestion at alternative routes and transshipment hubs essential for trade with Far East Asia, West Central Asia, and Europe.”

Since October 19 last year and in response to Israel's barbarous war in the Gaza Strip, Yemeni forces have been engaged in numerous operations in the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden targeting Israeli ships or those heading towards the ports of the occupied Palestinian territories.

The assaults have pushed several vessels passing through the Suez Canal and the Bab al-Mandeb Strait to take an alternative and much longer route around South Africa’s Cape of Good Hope, causing major delays.

Yemeni forces say their strikes will continue as long as the Israeli regime sustains the onslaught on Gaza.

Yemen has also successfully imposed a blockade on the port of Eilat, in the southern part of the occupied territories, leading to its declaration of bankruptcy and causing shipping prices to soar.

In January, the United States and Britain began striking Yemen in order to dissuade the country from targeting Israeli ships.

Despite months of US-led airstrikes, Yemeni forces have continued their operations, drawing from an arsenal of increasingly advanced weapons to attack Israeli, US and UK vessels in and around the Red Sea.

Abdul-Malik al-Houthi, the leader of Yemen’s Ansarullah resistance movement, recently said the naval tactics of the Yemeni armed forces in the Red Sea had taken the United States off-guard, and that Washington’s advanced military technology has failed to stop the retaliatory operations.

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