Shipping giants leave the Red Sea

Four of the top five global shipping giants have announced that their ships will no longer pass through the Red Sea until further notice. The Danish Maersk and the German Hapag Lloyd began abandoning the route. A few hours later, the Italian-Swiss MSC and the French CMA CGM were added.

The transit of their ships through the Suez Canal is therefore suspended after yet another attack on a cargo ship in the Red Sea by the Yemeni Houthi armed group.

It is one of the side effects of the war between Israel and Hamas, which risks putting global mercantile traffic in crisis. The ships will be diverted to different itineraries which however will cause an extension of the "journey by at least 15 days", according to calculations by the shipping platform Flexport, and it will increase the costs as well

On Thursday 13 December the Yemeni government threatened a maritime siege on Israel starting from the Red Sea and the Strait of Bab al Mandab, where almost half of the world's sea traffic passes and which connects the Mediterranean with the Horn of Africa.