SANAA – Yemen’s armed Houthi movement threatened to block the strategic RedSea shipping lane if the Saudi-led coalition it is fighting keeps pushingtoward the port of Hodeidah it controls, the Houthi-run SABA news agencyreported.
Yemen lies beside the southern mouth of the Red Sea, one of the mostimportant trade routes in the world for oil tankers, which pass nearYemen’s shores while heading from the Middle East through the Suez Canal toEurope.
While SABA gave no details on how Houthis could carry out any such move,the Bab al-Mandab strait, where the Red Sea meets the Gulf of Aden in theArabian Sea, is only 20 km (12 mile) wide, making hundreds of shipspotentially an easy target.