US forces on Tuesday carried out fresh strikes on targets linked with Houthi militants in Yemen, amid disruption to global trade caused by cargo ships diverting to avoid the Iran-backed group’s attacks in the Red Sea.
The US military’s Central Command said its forces struck and destroyed four anti-ship ballistic missiles that the Houthis had prepared to launch from Yemen in the early hours of Tuesday. It was the third round of strikes by American forces on Houthi targets in Yemen in less than a week as the US seeks to deter the rebels’ attacks on shipping in the key waterway.
However, the Houthis still succeeded hours later in launching a missile that struck the Zografia, a Greek-owned Maltese-flag ship for carrying dry bulk commodities, which was sailing towards the Suez Canal. That followed Monday’s missile strike on another bulk carrier in the Gulf of Aden.
The latest Houthi strikes have prompted more categories of ships to avoid the key shipping route through the Red Sea, instead taking a longer journey between Asia and Europe via the Cape of Good Hope and delaying deliveries to companies.
Automotive groups have been especially affected by delays to ships, which have so far mainly affected container vessels carrying manufactured goods and semi-finished components.
Volvo Cars on Tuesday said it had halted production at its factory in Belgium after the shipping disruption delayed a delivery of gearboxes, while tyre manufacturer Michelin said Red Sea delays would lead to “occasional stoppages” at its European factories in January.
Figures from Clarksons, the London-based shipping services company, suggested that more classes of ships were beginning to divert: between January 13 and 15, arrivals of dry bulk carriers in the Gulf of Aden, by the Red Sea, had fallen 25 per cent from the first half of December. Until last week, arrivals of such vessels had hardly been affected.
That decline threatens delays and extra costs for industries including food manufacturing and metals that receive shipments of the many commodities transported in dry bulk carriers.
Tuesday’s US action followed an initial wave of strikes by both UK and US forces on more than 60 Houthi targets in Yemen on Thursday and Friday nights, which the countries said aimed to deter the Houthis and stem the disruption to shipping.
The Houthis have vowed to respond aggressively to the military action against them and to continue targeting ships. They insist their campaign is a response to Israel’s offensive against Hamas, the Palestinian militant movement, in Gaza.
The Houthis fired their latest missile at about 1.45pm local time into “international shipping lanes” in the southern Red Sea, according to the US Central Command. The Zografia, which was empty of cargo when attacked, was “struck but seaworthy” and continued on its journey, with no injuries reported, the statement said.
US forces also said on Tuesday that the country’s navy had seized Iranian-made ballistic missile and cruise missile components on January 11 from a vessel heading to “resupply Houthi forces in Yemen”. Two Navy Seals were lost at sea in the operation and the search for them continued, they said.
The latest Houthi assaults raise the prospect that dry bulk shipowners will divert en masse away from the Red Sea route, as companies operating container ships have already done. Arrivals of container ships have fallen 90 per cent since early December, according to Clarksons.
One large ship operator, Japan’s NYK Line, said on Tuesday it had “temporarily suspended” Red Sea navigation for all its vessels, which include dry bulk ships, tankers, liquefied natural gas (LNG) carriers and car-carrying roll-on, roll-off ships.
“For vessels navigating near the Red Sea, NYK has instructed waiting in safe waters and is considering route changes,” the company said.
Other natural gas tanker operators are also changing routes. Nils Kristian Strøm, managing director of Knutsen LNG, which operates six tankers for Shell, confirmed vessels operating for the company had been diverted to the longer route.
Another three natural gas carriers working for Qatar’s state-owned QatarEnergy — which had been due to enter the Red Sea to sail on to Europe — had diverted to different routes, according to ship-tracking data from Kpler, an information service.
Qatari Prime Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman al-Thani said on Tuesday that the escalating attacks in the Red Sea had changed “how we view the international trade, how we view international shipping, how interconnected we are from east to west”.
Speaking at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Sheikh Mohammed said: “I believe that if we want to address the issue, we need to address the real issue, the central issue, which is (the war in) Gaza, in order to get everything else defused.”
Also at Davos, US national security adviser Jake Sullivan said his country had expected the Houthis to continue to threaten the US after its first strikes. More countries would need to confront the group, he said.
“(This) comes down . . . to the broad set of countries, including those with influence in Tehran and influence in other capitals in the Middle East, making this a priority,” he said.
Such steps would indicate the “entire world” rejected the idea that a group such as the Houthis could “basically hijack the world”, as they were doing, he said.
Additional reporting by Peter Campbell in London and Sarah White in Paris