A maritime transport expert warned on Wednesday that the movement of container ships in the Red Sea has declined by approximately 70 percent since mid-November due to Houthi attacks on shipping ships in this region.
“Our data shows that since the attack on the Galaxy Leader – the ship that the Houthi rebels seized in Yemen on November 19, they are still holding its 25 crew members hostage,” said Ami Daniel, founder and president of Windward, which provides maritime transportation consulting services. – The number of ro-ro ships (specialized in transporting cars) using the Cape of Good Hope route, located in the southernmost part of the African continent, has tripled.
The Galaxy Leader, in turn, was a ro-ro ship owned by a British company whose owner was an Israeli businessman.
Daniel added, “The passage of ro-ro ships in the Red Sea has decreased by 90 percent. They no longer pass through this area.”
As for ships carrying dry bulk goods (unpackaged goods such as grains, cement, coal…), their number in the Red Sea has decreased by 15 percent since the Houthis began their attacks.
Only oil tankers are still using the Suez Canal at the same frequency as before the attacks began, according to Daniel, an entrepreneur whose company uses artificial intelligence and data collection to advise shipping specialists.
Daniel says the current situation “will lead to a problem in the supply chain in the coming years because it will take some time to address this.”
He adds, “We are not at the level of Covid, but we are not far from it in terms of the repercussions on the supply chain.”
On Tuesday, American and British forces shot down more than 20 drones and missiles over the Red Sea launched by the Houthis, in what London described as the “largest attack” carried out by the Iranian-backed rebels since the start of the Gaza war.
This attack came a week after 12 countries led by the United States warned the Houthis that they would face consequences if they did not stop targeting commercial ships in the Red Sea, one of the most important waterways for global trade.
During the past weeks, the Houthis launched more than 25 operations targeting commercial ships they suspected of being linked to Israel or heading to Israeli ports, near the strategic Bab al-Mandab Strait at the southern end of the Red Sea.
The Houthis say that they are launching these attacks in solidarity with the Gaza Strip, where a war has been raging between Israel and Hamas since October 7.
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2024-01-10 23:44:07
