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Yemen’s Iranian-backed Houthis are threatening merchant ships hundreds of miles out in the Indian Ocean after striking a container vessel well beyond the Red Sea last week, maritime officials and experts have warned.
The drone attack on the MSC Orion on the night of April 26 followed a threat by the Houthis in March to extend their attacks to the Indian Ocean, including on commercial vessels sailing between Asia and Europe around the Cape of Good Hope.
Many shipping companies have switched to that longer route to avoid Houthi attacks on the approaches to the Suez Canal in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden.
The Houthis have launched scores of strikes since November on commercial ships, saying they are acting in support of Gaza’s Palestinians, using a mixture of missiles and drones.
But the Islamist group’s strike on the MSC Orion expands the maritime area at risk from its campaign against western ships to a large and previously unaffected swath of the north-west Indian Ocean.
Jakob Larsen, head of maritime safety and security for Bimco, a large association of shipowners, predicted some shipping companies would reroute vessels further from Yemen to avoid the increased threat.
“It is likely that some ships — especially those with links to Israel, the US or UK — will be routed further away from the threat,” he said.
The MSC Orion, owned by Geneva-based Mediterranean Shipping Company (MSC), operator of the world’s biggest container ship fleet, was hit by a drone between 300 and 400 nautical miles south-east of the Horn of Africa, according to the UK’s Maritime Trade Operations office in Dubai.
While the Houthis claim to have targeted or hit other ships in the Indian Ocean in recent weeks, the MSC Orion attack was the first recognised by one of the international organisations working to safeguard the area’s vital sea lanes against piracy and military threats.
The vessel is sister ship of the MSC Aries, seized by Iran’s Revolutionary Guards on April 13 in the Strait of Hormuz, and was operating the same “Himalaya Express” service between Europe and ports in Sri Lanka and India.
Specialist shipping press reports have suggested MSC was directing vessels to call at the port of Salalah, in Oman, instead of ports inside the Gulf, to avoid sailing past Iran.
Marine Traffic, a vessel-tracking service, showed the MSC Orion was en route to Salalah when it was attacked. MSC did not respond to a request to comment.
Both the MSC Aries and MSC Orion were built as part of an eight-ship order for Israel’s Zodiac Maritime. The Aries is still owned by a company linked to Zodiac and operated by MSC, while the Orion’s registered owner is MSC.
UK Maritime Trade Operations said that the MSC Orion and crew were safe and continuing to their next port of call. A bulletin from the Joint Maritime Information Centre, an international organisation sharing information on threats in the area, said debris from an unmanned aerial vehicle — or drone — had been found on the ship, which suffered only minor damage.
The Houthis succeeded in February in sinking the Rubymar, a Lebanese-owned ship they described as British, at the southern end of the Red Sea. An attack in March killed three mariners aboard the True Confidence, a bulk carrier, in the Gulf of Aden.
The group’s strikes decreased in frequency and severity following the withdrawal in early April to Iran of the Behshad, an Iranian-owned ship widely credited with supplying the group with intelligence and targeting information. The Behshad had spent three years in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden, off Yemen.
As well as the MSC Orion attack, the Houthis also on Friday hit the Andromeda Star, an oil tanker sailing through the Red Sea.
A bulletin following the MSC Orion attack from EOS Risk, a UK-based consultancy, warned customers that Houthi drones had a range of up to 2,000km from the group’s bases in cities such as Hodeida, on Yemen’s Red Sea coast.
The Houthis have said they are targeting ships with links to Israel, the US and the UK, although they have hit a number of vessels where those links were tenuous or related to past owners.
MSC has been the target of several attacks by Iranian-linked groups in recent months — targeting that the JMIC attributed to the company’s links to Israel.
Jon Gahagan, president of Sedna Global, a maritime risk specialist, said it was “highly likely” Iran had supported the attack on the MSC Orion, given the distance from Yemen and the Houthis’ lack of a maritime surveillance capability.