On March 21, 2024, Bloomberg disclosed that the Houthi rebels in Yemen have reached an agreement with Russia and China, allowing ships from these two countries to transit through the Bab el-Mandeb Strait without the risk of missile attacks. In return, they would receive a form of political support internationally. However, there are no official confirmations of this news, which Bloomberg states still has unclear aspects. If confirmed, this deal would particularly benefit Chinese maritime companies, such as the shipping giant Cosco Shipping, enabling them to resume transiting through the Suez Canal instead of circumnavigating Africa. In the Mediterranean, this would significantly benefit the port of Piraeus, which is controlled by Cosco.
Meanwhile, the downing of missiles and drones by American and European military ships continues. Also on March 21, a Mk88A Sea Lynx helicopter from the German frigate Hessen destroyed a marine drone in the Red Sea, and the same day, a French frigate intercepted a missile. The two ships are part of the European operation Aspides. According to the Pentagon, since November 2023, the Houthis have carried out around fifty attacks against ships traveling through the Gulf of Aden and the Red Sea.
The Red Sea crisis is also boosting Somali piracy, which has seen an increase in assaults, both attempted and successful, over the last three months. Following the hijacking of the Bangladeshi merchant ship Abdullah, now anchored off the Somali coast, pirates have attempted two more boardings of ships in the Gulf of Aden in the last two days, the most recent being the Liberian-flagged oil tanker Yamilah III. In both instances, the boardings were thwarted by armed guards on board the ships. According to the European naval force Eunavfor, there have been twenty-two pirate attacks in the area since November 2023, including four on merchant ships and eighteen on dhow (small Arab cargo ships), with one cargo ship and seven dhows still under pirate control.
