Yemen blames Houthis for sinking of India-flagged cargo vessel in the Red Sea

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Yemen’s internationally recognised government has condemned the attack that sank an India-flagged cargo vessel in the Red Sea, blaming the Houthi movement for a strike that left fourteen sailors in the water off the country’s western coast and widened an already dangerous maritime confrontation along one of the world’s busiest trade corridors.

The vessel, the mechanised sailing ship MSV Faize Noore Oliya, was struck by a projectile on Tuesday in Red Sea waters off Hodeidah, the port city held by the Houthis. The ship capsized and sank. All fourteen crew members aboard, thirteen of them Indian nationals, were recovered by the Yemeni Coast Guard and taken to the government-held Port of Mokha, further south along the coast.

Mechanised sailing vessels of this kind — motorised wooden dhows — carry a large share of the smaller-scale trade that moves between Indian ports and the Arabian Peninsula and the Horn of Africa. They typically sail outside the tracking and naval escort arrangements that cover container ships and tankers, which leaves their crews unusually exposed whenever the security picture in the southern Red Sea deteriorates.

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Expatriates in Aden called the incident a terrorist attack and a flagrant violation of international law and of the rules governing international maritime navigation. The ministry expressed Yemen’s solidarity with India, said it was coordinating with the relevant Indian authorities, and pledged to extend support and facilitation to the rescued sailors. Yemen’s official news agency reported that the House of Representatives issued a parallel condemnation, describing the strike as part of a wider pattern of attacks on commercial navigation.

India’s response came quickly. Sarbananda Sonowal, the minister of ports, shipping and waterways, said India strongly condemned what he called an unprovoked attack on a defenceless mechanised sailing vessel, and said he had instructed the director general of the maritime administration to coordinate with all relevant agencies on the security of Indian seafarers in the region. The Ministry of External Affairs said its embassy in Riyadh was monitoring the situation closely and working with Yemeni authorities on the safety of the crew, adding that the continuing incidents of attacks on commercial shipping in the region were deeply worrisome.

No group had claimed responsibility for the strike in the hours after it occurred, so attribution rests for now on Yemeni government sources. Major General Sadiq Dwaid, spokesman for the government-aligned National Resistance Forces, said the targeting of the Indian ship was an extension of Houthi conduct directed against the Yemeni people, pointing to earlier strikes on oil export terminals and on Yemeni ports more generally. The Houthis have not publicly addressed the sinking.

The attack came a little over two weeks into a maritime blockade the Houthis declared on 20 July, under which they said they would stop Saudi Arabian shipping from transiting the Bab al-Mandab Strait, the narrow passage linking the Red Sea to the Gulf of Aden. The group has justified the measure by accusing Riyadh of imposing what it describes as an unjust and oppressive siege through its backing of the internationally recognised government. Saudi Arabia rejected the accusation and said it would take all necessary measures to protect its vessels.

At least two Saudi tankers have been struck since the blockade was announced. If Houthi responsibility for Tuesday’s sinking is confirmed, it would mark the first known strike on a vessel with no Saudi connection since the declaration — a broadening that shipowners and marine insurers are likely to read as evidence the campaign is no longer narrowly targeted.

The timing compounds an already strained picture for global trade. Iran has been enforcing a separate blockade of the Strait of Hormuz, and shipping that rerouted toward the Red Sea and Bab al-Mandab to avoid the Gulf now finds risk waiting at the alternative corridor as well. Several cargo ships bound for Saudi ports have reversed course in recent weeks rather than attempt the transit.

For Yemen itself the consequences are more immediate than for the freight market. The country imports the overwhelming majority of its food and fuel, and the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden approaches are the routes by which those cargoes arrive. Higher insurance premiums and diverted sailings translate quickly into higher prices in Yemeni markets, in a country the United Nations describes as facing one of the world’s largest humanitarian emergencies, with well over half the population requiring some form of assistance.

The war that began when the Houthis seized Sanaa in September 2014, and escalated with the Saudi-led military intervention the following March, has now run for more than a decade. It has hollowed out state institutions, split the economy between rival monetary authorities in Aden and Sanaa, and displaced millions of people. Officials in Aden argue that attacks on shipping deepen that damage directly, because the export revenue they interrupt is what pays public sector salaries.

Tuesday’s rescue at least ended without loss of life, and Indian officials publicly acknowledged the Yemeni Coast Guard’s part in it. Whether it changes the pattern of attacks is a separate question. Neither the naval coalitions operating in the region nor the diplomatic track around the wider confrontation with Iran has so far produced a durable reduction in risk in the southern Red Sea, and commercial operators are once again weighing whether the route is worth taking at all.