Red Sea's First Deaths in a Year ☠️

SHIPPING NEWS

6 Dead in Red Sea Missile Strike

Two of the world's most critical shipping lanes were hit within hours of each other on Tuesday, in the deadliest day for maritime commerce since the US-Israel war on Iran began in February.

The first attack came at the Bab el-Mandeb Strait, the narrow chokepoint at the southern entrance to the Red Sea, between Yemen and Djibouti, that every ship must pass through to reach the Suez Canal. Iran-aligned Houthi rebels launched a double-tap missile strike on the Tihamah, a Tanzania flagged, Egyptian owned multipurpose cargo ship. Three ballistic missiles hit the vessel at first light, sparking a fire and inflicting extensive damage. A follow up missile struck as rescuers arrived. Six people were killed, three Pakistani crew members, one Indonesian, and two Yemeni National Resistance Forces personnel with ten others injured. It's the first fatal attack on shipping at the strait in over a year. The Houthis claimed the vessel was carrying Saudi military equipment. Yemen's government says it carried commercial cargo and food supplies.

Hours later and over 2,000 kilometres away, US forces struck the Panama flagged container ship Vela Nova in the Gulf of Oman, the waterway leading into the Strait of Hormuz. A US Navy MH-60 helicopter fired two Hellfire missiles after the vessel allegedly ignored repeated warnings while sailing toward an Iranian port. The strikes disabled the ship's steering and propulsion and sparked a fire on board; all 17 crew were accounted for with no fatalities reported.

Daily transits through the Bab el-Mandeb have dropped from around 50 to 32 vessels since the Houthis declared their naval blockade last month. That matters more than ever, petroleum flows through the strait reached 8.1 million barrels per day in the second quarter as Saudi Arabia redirected oil westward to bypass Hormuz where traffic has collapsed to as few as six ships a day, compared with a pre-war average above 130. Carriers are increasingly rerouting around the Cape of Good Hope, adding roughly two weeks to Asia/Europe voyages. Gulf states are accelerating pipeline construction to bypass the chokepoints entirely while buyers are shifting toward Latin American and US crude.

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