India-bound cargo ship seized by Houthis in Red Sea

A cargo ship bound for Gujarat’s Pipavaa port from Turkey is feared hijacked in the Red Sea shipping route on November 19^th raising tensions that attack on Hamas has its repercussion on the Marine front.

Houthi rebels based in Yeman and backed by Iran is understood to be behind the hijacking of the India bound ship according to international media reports. There was no immediate comment from the Houthis that threatened to target Israeli-linked vessels in the Red Sea. Last month,.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said 25 crew members of various nationalities, including Bulgarians, Filipinos, Mexicans and Ukrainians but no Israelis, had been on board the hijacked Bahamas-flagged ship.

Netanyahu’s office condemned the seizure of the Galaxy Leader, a vehicle carrier, as an “Iranian act of terror.” The Israeli military called the hijacking a “very grave incident of global consequence.”

Satellite tracking data from MarineTraffic.com  showed the ship Galaxy Leader traveling in the Red Sea southwest of Jeddah, Saudi Arabia when it was hijacked,. The vessel had been in Korfez, Turkey, and was on its way to Pipavav, Gujarat, at the time of the seizure.

Israeli officials insisted the ship was British-owned and Japanese-operated. However, ownership of the vessel is a subject matter of debate with some claiming that ship was owned by Ray carriers founded by a Israeli industrialist. The complex world of international shipping often involves a series of management companies, flags and owners stretching across the globe in a single vessel.

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The British military’s United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations, which provides warnings to sailors in the Persian Gulf and the wider region, put the hijacking as having occurred some 150 kilometers (90 miles) off the coast of Yemen’s port city of Hodeida, near the coast of Eritrea.

The Red Sea, stretching from Egypt’s Suez Canal to the narrow Bab el-Mandeb Strait separating the Arabian Peninsula from Africa, remains a key trade route for global shipping and energy supplies.