Ships will have to obtain a permit from Yemen’s Houthi-controlled Maritime Affairs Authority before entering Yemeni waters, Houthi Telecommunications Minister Misfer Al-Numair said on Monday.

The Iran-backed Houthi rebels have repeatedly launched drones and missiles against international commercial shipping in the Gulf of Aden since mid-November, saying they are acting in solidarity with Palestinians in Gaza during the ongoing war with Israel, sparked by Hamas’s October 7 attacks.

The near-daily attacks have forced firms into long and costly diversions around southern Africa, and stoked fears that the Israel-Hamas war could destabilize the wider Middle East. The United States and Britain have bombed Houthi targets in response.

• “(We) are ready to assist requests for permits and identify ships with the Yemeni Navy, and we confirm this is out of concern for their safety,” Al Masirah TV, the main television news outlet run by Yemen’s Iran-aligned Houthi movement, quotes Al-Numair as saying.

Source: TOI

Header: Armed Yemeni supporters of the Iran-backed Huthi movement, brandish their weapons as they rally in the capital Sanaa to protest against the Saudi-led coalition’s intervention in their country, on January 27, 2022. The coalition intervened in Yemen in 2015 to prop up the internationally recognised government after the Huthis seized the capital Sanaa months earlier. Hundreds of thousands have been killed and millions displaced in the conflict which the United Nations has labelled the world’s worst humanitarian crisis (Photo by MOHAMMED HUWAIS / AFP)