A spokesman for the German shipping company Hapag-Lloyd said on Friday that the company is considering whether to stop sailing through the Red Sea, hours after it was reported that one of its ships had been attacked near Yemen.
This comes as a spokesman for the Danish shipping company, A.P. Moller-Maersk, told Reuters that the company will stop all container shipping operations through the Red Sea until further notice, to take another route around Africa.
A few days ago, the A.P. Moller-Maersk group announced the imposition of additional risk fees on container shipments to Israel to cover the increasing insurance premiums due to the security situation, starting from the beginning of next year.
On Friday, the Houthi group announced the targeting of two container ships in the Red Sea that it said were heading to Israel, after their crews refused to respond to calls and warning messages.
On November 19, Houthi military forces detained a commercial ship owned by an Israeli businessman called the Galaxy Leader, following the repercussions of the Israeli aggression on the Gaza Strip.
The American website Axios had reported that ship movement to the Israeli port of Eilat had almost completely stopped as a result of the attacks and recent developments.
The Houthi threat to ships dealing with Israel, which pass through the Bab al-Mandab Strait, would affect its trade with the East, especially with Asia.
10% of international maritime trade passes through the Bab al-Mandeb Strait annually through the passage of about 21,000 ships, and 6 million barrels of oil pass through it daily.
