Escalating attacks on commercial shipping in the Red Sea are rattling ocean carriers with a 15,000-TEU Hapag-Lloyd vessel hit by a missile early Friday just a day after a projectile narrowly missed a Maersk container ship.<\/p>\n
The incident prompted Maersk to instruct all its ships scheduled to pass through the narrow Bab al-Mandab Strait off Yemen where the attacks are being launched to stop their journeys and await instructions.<\/p>\n
\u201cFollowing the near-miss incident involving Maersk Gibraltar yesterday and yet another attack on a container vessel today, we have instructed all Maersk vessels in the area bound to pass through the Bab al-Mandab Strait to pause their journey until further notice,\u201d a Maersk spokesperson said Friday.<\/p>\n
Other carriers appear to be doing the same with ship tracking services showing Hapag-Lloyd\u2019s Tsingdao Express joining the Colombine Maersk and U-turning in the Red Sea, and the HMM Pride en route from the US East Coast to Asia turning in the Med and heading back towards the Straights of Gibraltar.<\/p>\n
Lars Jensen, CEO of Vespucci Maritime and a Journal of Commerce analyst, pointed out the U-turns in a LinkedIn post Friday.<\/p>\n
\u201c(Vessels) might be awaiting assessment of the situation after the Hapag-Lloyd vessel got hit by a missile, but this is exactly what is looked like in 2021 when vessels did U-turns at the blockage of the Suez Canal and started going round Africa,\u201d he wrote.<\/p>\n
String of attacks<\/p>\n
The Hapag-Lloyd ship struck by a missile was one of a string of incidents, including boardings, listed by UK military authorities this week as Houthi militia in Yemen escalated their attacks on all ships sailing through the narrow Bab al-Mandab Strait at the southern entrance to the Red Sea in response to the war in Gaza.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe confirm that today our 15,000-TEU vessel Al Jasrah, sailing in the MD2 service, has been attacked while sailing close to the coast of Yemen,\u201d a spokesperson for Hapag-Lloyd told the Journal of Commerce.<\/p>\n
There were no injuries and Al Jasrah has resumed its journey to Asia with Singapore as the next port of call. The spokesperson said additional measures to secure the safety of its crews would be taken but declined to provide any details.<\/p>\n
The Red Sea and Sea of Aden are monitored by the US Central Command that regards the Bab al-Mandab Strait that links the Gulf of Aden and the Red Sea as \u201ca critical choke point\u201d for shipping. At its widest point between Djibouti and Yemen, the strait is less than 13 nautical miles across and commercial shipping is easily accessible to rebels launching speedboats from Yemen.<\/p>\n
On Thursday, the 10,100-TEU Maersk Gibraltar, deployed on Maersk\u2019s ME2 service between Europe and the Middle East, was targeted in the strait while en route from Salalah, Oman, to Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, the carrier said in a statement. A projectile narrowly missed the vessel which has continued on its journey.<\/p>\n
Maersk urged world leaders to find a political solution to the attacks that were putting seafarer lives at risk and disrupting global trade.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are deeply concerned about the highly escalated security situation in the southern Red Sea and Gulf of Aden. The recent attacks on commercial vessels in the area are alarming and pose a significant threat to the safety and security of seafarers,\u201d Maersk said in the statement Friday.<\/p>\n
Last week an OOCL container ship heading north for the Mediterranean was hit by a projectile in the Bab al-Mandab Strait but there were no injuries reported and the vessel was able to resume its transit.<\/p>\n
\u2018Any vessel is a target\u2019<\/p>\n
Peter Sand, chief analyst at rate benchmarking platform Xeneta, said the attacks could cause serious supply chain disruption with more than 50 vessels transiting the Suez Canal every day, carrying billions of dollars of goods to North Europe, the Mediterranean and North America East Coast.<\/p>\n
\u201cAll ships transiting the Suez Canal must sail through the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden and the Houthi militia has made clear that any vessel is a target,\u201d Sand said in a statement Friday.<\/p>\n
Several carriers have begun to levy war risk surcharges on passages through the Red Sea, while Zim Integrated Shipping Services (Zim), an Israeli carrier based in Haifa, has increased freight rates on its Asia-Mediterranean service to cover the rising costs of securing its vessels.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn response to the continuous threats to the safe transit and global trade in the Arabian and Red Seas, Zim has implemented temporary proactive measures to ensure the safety of its crews, vessels and customers\u2019 cargo, including the re-routing of some of its vessels,\u201d Zim said in a statement this week.<\/p>\n
Other ocean carriers are also avoiding the area. They include THE Alliance carriers Hapag-Lloyd and Ocean Network Express (ONE) who said vessels operating some of the Mediterranean-Asia MD1 and MD3 services would be diverted via the Cape of Good Hope around southern Africa.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are already seeing ocean freight liner operators and owners choosing to reroute vessels away from the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden region,\u201d Sand said. \u201cThe main alternative is to sail around the Cape of Good Hope, which adds up to 10 days sailing time for services from Asia to North Europe and East Mediterranean.\u201d<\/p>\n
Source:<\/p>\n
Knowler, G. (2023, December 15). Hapag-Lloyd vessel hit in Red Sea \u201cchoke point.\u201d<\/i> Journal of Commerce. https:\/\/www.joc.com\/article\/hapag-lloyd-vessel-hit-red-sea-choke-point_20231215.html<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Escalating attacks on commercial shipping in the Red Sea are rattling ocean carriers with a 15,000-TEU Hapag-Lloyd vessel hit by a missile early Friday just a day after a projectile narrowly missed a Maersk container ship. The incident prompted Maersk to instruct all its ships scheduled to pass through the narrow Bab al-Mandab Strait off …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[78],"tags":[88,84],"class_list":["post-2831","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-container-liners","tag-maritime"],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/ems.cohesionfreight.com.hk:8080\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2831","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/ems.cohesionfreight.com.hk:8080\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/ems.cohesionfreight.com.hk:8080\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ems.cohesionfreight.com.hk:8080\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ems.cohesionfreight.com.hk:8080\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2831"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/ems.cohesionfreight.com.hk:8080\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2831\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2832,"href":"http:\/\/ems.cohesionfreight.com.hk:8080\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2831\/revisions\/2832"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/ems.cohesionfreight.com.hk:8080\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2831"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ems.cohesionfreight.com.hk:8080\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2831"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ems.cohesionfreight.com.hk:8080\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2831"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}