Foreign Minister Afrah al-Zouba discusses Red Sea and Gulf of Aden security with Somali counterpart
Yemen Herald News 
ADEN, Yemen — Yemen’s foreign minister and her Somali counterpart discussed cooperation on protecting shipping in the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden in a phone call on Sunday.
Afrah al-Zouba, Yemen’s minister of foreign affairs and expatriates, spoke with Abdisalam Abdi Ali, Somalia’s minister of foreign affairs and international cooperation, the state news agency Saba reported.
The two also reviewed bilateral relations and agreed to consult and coordinate in regional and international forums, according to the readout.
They discussed threats to the security of both countries and of the wider region, the agency said.
The account of the call rests on the Yemeni foreign ministry’s own readout, distributed by Saba. Yemen Herald found no independent confirmation of it, and Somalia’s foreign ministry has not published its own account.
Saba also said the ministers covered what it described as Houthi military escalation on Yemen’s western coast and at Bab al-Mandeb. That characterisation is the Yemeni government’s; the Houthi movement describes its coastal advance as a legitimate military operation.
Saba rendered the Somali minister’s name as Abdulsalam Abdi. Somalia’s foreign ministry gives it as Abdisalam Abdi Ali.
The call was one of several al-Zouba has made in recent weeks. She has spoken with counterparts in Egypt, Sudan and Djibouti about Red Sea security, the Yemeni outlet Yemen Monitor reported.
She and the Somali minister had met in person earlier, during a tour of Gulf capitals.
The two countries face each other across the Gulf of Aden, a stretch of water roughly 200 kilometres wide at its narrowest. Both are members of the Arab League.
The call followed a rapid change on the water.
Houthi forces took the port city of Mocha on Sept. 10 and the island of Mayyun, also known as Perim, the following day, Al Jazeera reported. The advance gave the group control of Yemen’s Red Sea coastline and the eastern side of the Bab al-Mandeb strait.
The Houthis said on Sept. 11 that shipping in the Red Sea was safe with the exception of Saudi vessels.
Yemen’s internationally recognised government, which Saudi Arabia backs, has carried out air strikes along the coast in an attempt to reverse the advance.
On the Somali side of the gulf, piracy has returned.
Six armed men boarded the tanker MT Glamour on Thursday about 38 nautical miles off the Somali coast, the European Union Naval Force said. The vessel sails under the flag of St Vincent and the Grenadines.
The crew stopped the ship, shut down its systems and sealed themselves in its citadel before the boarding, the naval force said. The pirates left after international forces moved toward the area.
Somali pirates released the cargo ship MV Sword and its 17 crew on Friday, five months after seizing it. Puntland authorities and security sources said a ransom had been paid.
The International Maritime Organization has recorded at least 15 piracy attacks off Somalia this year, the highest number since 2013.
Five vessels taken since April remain in pirate hands, with 87 crew aboard, according to tallies compiled from Puntland authorities and naval reporting. Yemen Herald could not independently verify the crew figure.
The fighting inside Yemen has pushed people across the same water.
Abdusattor Esoev, head of the International Organization for Migration in Yemen, said nearly 46,000 people had been displaced since fighting escalated in the second week of September, and that the true figure was likely higher.
At least 76,000 people have been displaced since July. More than 2,000 Yemenis reached Djibouti in a single 24-hour period, according to figures cited by Al Jazeera.
Esoev said the fall of Mocha, where the United Nations had kept a substantial presence, had made it harder for aid agencies to reach people in need.
Yemen’s war reignited in July after roughly four years of relative calm. A United Nations-brokered truce halted large-scale fighting in 2022, after eight years of full-scale conflict.
The United Nations humanitarian response plan for 2026 put the number of Yemenis needing assistance at more than 22 million, with 18.3 million acutely food insecure and 5.2 million internally displaced.
The plan sought 2.16 billion dollars to reach 12 million people.
Somalia and Yemen have cooperated before on migration across the gulf, a route used for years by Ethiopian and Somali migrants travelling toward the Gulf states.
Shipping in the region has been squeezed from two directions. Saudi Arabia shut its East-West crude oil pipeline last week after drones launched from Iraq struck it in the Riyadh and Medina areas, its foreign ministry said. The energy ministry called the shutdown a precaution.
The 1,200-kilometre pipeline had been carrying four million to five million barrels a day, about 4 to 5 per cent of global supply, according to data cited by Reuters.
With the pipeline shut, Saudi Arabia is expected to route more crude through the Suez Canal and the Sumed pipeline. That path runs past Bab al-Mandeb.
Brent crude, the global benchmark, was trading above 104 dollars a barrel. It was near 72 dollars before the US-Israel war on Iran began on Feb. 28.
Saba did not say whether the ministers set a date for further contact.
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