All ships have to obtain a permit from the Yemeni government based in the capital Sana’a before entering the country’s territorial waters, a minister has said.
“Yemen’s telecoms ministry is ready to assist processing requests for permits and identification by ships from the Yemeni Navy, and we insist on the issue of obtaining permits because of our concern for the safety of these ships,” Yemen’s telecoms minister Misfer Al-Numair told Yemen’s al-Masirah television network on Monday.
The statement came hours after a major global telecoms company based in Hong Kong said that at least four of its subsea cables had been damaged in maritime clashes in the Red Sea last week.
Yemen’s Armed Forces have been striking Israeli-linked ships since November last year in solidarity with the Palestinians in Gaza, where more than five months of Israeli war has killed some 30,631 people, mostly women and children, and injured more than 72,000 others.
Targeting Israel-linked vessels in the Red Sea and in the Gulf of Aden is part of Yemen’s push to force the Israeli regime to end its brutal aggression against the Palestinians in Gaza.
In the latest incident, the UK Maritime Trade Operations (UKMTO) agency and British security firm Ambrey said on Monday that a fire caused by a pair of explosions had broken out onboard a vessel 91 nautical miles southeast of the Yemeni port city of Aden. It added that there were no casualties and the vessel was proceeding to its next port of call.
Ambrey identified the vessel as an Israel-affiliated ship that had been sailing under Liberia’s flag from Singapore to Djibouti. However, there was no mention of the name of the vessel.
This is while Yemeni armed forces said they had attacked MSC SKY in the Arabian Sea. Maritime traffic monitoring websites identified the MSC SKY as a 183.71-meter Liberia-flagged ship that had been located in the Gulf of Aden on Monday.
Yemen’s attacks have forced some of the biggest shipping and oil companies to suspend transit through one of the world’s most important maritime trade routes.
The United States and the United Kingdom have been carrying out strikes against Yemen since early January to force Yemen to stop its strikes against Israel-linked ships. That has caused Yemenis to expand their maritime attacks to target ships owned by the two countries.
On February 27, Mohammed Abdul-Salam, a spokesman for Yemen’s ruling Houthi Ansarullah movement and the chief negotiator of the movement, stressed that the Arab country’s attacks against shipping in the Red Sea would only stop after the Israeli regime ended its aggression and blockade on the Palestinians in Gaza.
