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Iran-backed Houthis in Yemen are threatening commercial vessels hundreds of miles away in the Indian Ocean after they attacked a container ship well outside the Red Sea last week, maritime officials and experts warned.
The drone attack on the MSC Orion on the night of April 26 followed a threat by the Houthis in March to expand their attacks across the Indian Ocean, including on merchant ships sailing between Asia and Europe around the Cape of Good Hope.
Many shipping companies have switched to this longer route to avoid Houthi attacks on the approaches to the Suez Canal in the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden.
The Houthis have carried out numerous attacks on commercial vessels since November and said they would use a mix of missiles and drones to support Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.
But the Islamist group’s attack on the MSC Orion expands the maritime area threatened by its campaign against Western ships to a large and previously untouched part of the northwest Indian Ocean.
Jakob Larsen, head of maritime security at Bimco, a major shipping association, predicted that some shipping companies would reroute their ships further away from Yemen to avoid the increased threat.
“It is likely that some ships – particularly those with ties to Israel, the US or the UK – will be moved further away from the threat,” he said.
The MSC Orion, owned by Geneva-based Mediterranean Shipping Company (MSC), operator of the world’s largest container ship fleet, was hit by a drone between 300 and 400 nautical miles southeast of the Horn of Africa, according to the British Maritime trade office in Dubai.
While the Houthis claim to have attacked or attacked other ships in the Indian Ocean in recent weeks, the attack on the MSC Orion was the first to be recognized by one of the international organizations working to protect the region’s vital sea routes Use piracy and military threats.
The ship is the sister ship of MSC Aries, which was seized by Iran’s Revolutionary Guards in the Strait of Hormuz on April 13 and was operating the same “Himalayan Express” service between Europe and ports in Sri Lanka and India.
Shipping trade press reports indicate that MSC has instructed ships to call at the port of Salalah in Oman rather than ports in the Gulf to avoid sailing past Iran.
Marine Traffic, a ship tracking service, showed that the MSC Orion was en route to Salalah at the time of the attack. MSC did not respond to a request for comment.
Both MSC Aries and MSC Orion were built as part of an eight-ship contract for Israel’s Zodiac Maritime. The Aries is still owned by a Zodiac-affiliated company and operated by MSC, while the registered owner of the Orion is MSC.
UK Maritime Trade Operations said the MSC Orion and its crew were safe and heading to their next port of call. A bulletin from the Joint Maritime Information Center, an international organization that shares information about threats in the region, said debris from an unmanned aerial vehicle – or drone – was found on the ship, which suffered only minor damage.
The Houthis managed to sink the Rubymar, a Lebanese ship they claimed was British, at the southern end of the Red Sea in February. An attack in March killed three sailors aboard the bulk carrier True Confidence in the Gulf of Aden.
The group’s attacks decreased in frequency and severity after the Behshad withdrew to Iran in early April. This was an Iranian ship that is widely responsible for providing the group with intelligence and targeting information. The Behshad had spent three years in the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden off Yemen.
In addition to the attack on the MSC Orion, the Houthis also attacked the Andromeda Star, an oil tanker traveling through the Red Sea, on Friday.
A bulletin following the attack on the MSC Orion from EOS Risk, a UK-based consultancy, warned clients that Houthi drones had a range of up to 2,000 km from the group’s bases in cities such as Hodeida on the Red Sea coast in Yemen.
The Houthis have said they are targeting ships with ties to Israel, the United States and the United Kingdom, although they have hit a number of vessels where those ties were tenuous or linked to previous owners.
MSC has been the target of several attacks by Iran-linked groups in recent months – targets that the JMIC attributed to the company’s ties to Israel.
Jon Gahagan, president of Sedna Global, a maritime risk specialist, said it was “highly likely” that Iran supported the attack on the MSC Orion, given the distance from Yemen and the Houthis’ lack of maritime surveillance capability.