Continuing Red Sea attacks on cargo ships ‘concerning’, says Sunak

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Britain is continuing to urge Houthi rebels to “desist” from carrying out “illegal” and disruptive attacks on cargo ships in the Red Sea, the Prime Minister has said.

Speaking during a press conference in Downing Street, Rishi Sunak said the situation remained “concerning” as attacks on commercial shipping in the region persisted despite RAF intervention.

The UK joined the US in carrying out air strikes against the Iran-backed militant group last week but clashes along vital global trade routes in the Middle East, with warships also being targeted, have continued since.

The US military confirmed on Thursday that it had fired another wave of ship and submarine-launch missile strikes against Houthi-controlled sites.

It marks the fourth time in days that it has directly targeted the group in Yemen as violence that ignited in the wake of the Israel-Hamas war continues to spill over in the Middle East.

The rebels, who support Hamas in the Palestinian group’s war against Israel, claim they have targeted ships with links to Tel Aviv.

Rebel supreme leader Abdel Malek al-Houthi, in his first comments since allied air strikes started, said on Thursday that Western military action does “not scare us” as he vowed to continue targeting ships linked to Israel, as well as vessels with British and American ties.

US president Joe Biden responded by saying his military’s strikes on the Houthis would continue, while accepting that they had not yet curtailed the Yemeni faction’s harassment of international shipping.

Earlier in the day, the Prime Minister told reporters: “The rise in attacks on commercial shipping is both illegal and causing enormous disruption to the global economy and putting innocent lives at risk.

“It was right that we took action to protect both interests and lives.

“And together with allies, we have been very clear in our condemnation of their behaviour.

“We will continue to urge them to desist from carrying out what are illegal attacks, putting people’s lives at risk.”

Foreign Secretary Lord Cameron met Iranian foreign minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian while in Davos for the World Economic Forum on Wednesday, to discuss the situation in the Middle East, including an emerging tit-for-tat clash between Tehran and Pakistan.

He said Iran should “expect a very strong response” from the West for both its backing of proxies in the region, with the Islamic republic a known supporter of Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon, and its recent attacks on Pakistan and Erbil in the Kurdistan region of Iraq.

The former prime minister, speaking to Times Radio, said: “I obviously wanted to deliver a very clear message about what the Houthis are doing in the Red Sea and the fact that these attacks on international shipping are illegal and unacceptable and damaging to world trade.

“They fly in the face of freedom of navigation. That was the principal message.

“But obviously I did challenge him about these other issues as well and said that the world is watching Iran and its influence over these proxies, but also the action it has been taking directly.

“People will draw conclusions from the actions that they are taking and they should expect a very strong response.”

Mr Amir-Abdollahian said on X, formerly Twitter, that he told Lord Cameron, according to an online translation, that “America and England should immediately stop supporting the war crimes of the Zionist apartheid regime against the Palestinians” – a reference to western backing for Israel’s right to respond to Hamas’s deadly October 7 raids.

In response to the Red Sea clashes, a large-scale operation on Friday carried out by London and Washington hit more than 60 targets across Yemen.

Mr Sunak told the Commons earlier this week that the initial assessment was that all 13 areas targeted by the RAF in the joint strikes were destroyed, with “no evidence” of civilian casualties.

The allied military intervention was in response to weeks of attacks by Houthi rebels that have posed a threat to the flow of global trade, disrupting merchant vessels passing through the sea to the Suez Canal, a route that serves 15% of world shipping.

Some UK retailers have warned that the need to divert cargo vessels could lead to shipping delays and higher costs.

Shipping firms have been forced to reroute around the Cape of Good Hope at the southern tip of Africa to avoid the Red Sea.

Pepco, the owner of Poundland, flagged that the clashes could have an impact on products available in its stores if the disruption was “prolonged”.

“We note that the current situation in the Red Sea is leading to elevated spot freight rates and delays to container lead times,” Pepco said on Thursday.

“The majority of our freight costs are contracted until the end of the third quarter, but the business is facing additional surcharges from carriers in relation to the longer shipping routes being taken.

“While there is limited impact on product availability currently, a prolonged issue in the region could also impact supply in the coming months.”

Economists have warned that further increases in inflation could take place due to the impact of insecurity in the Red Sea on shipping costs.

It comes after UK prices were found to have risen at a faster rate than forecasters expected last month.

The Office for National Statistics revealed on Wednesday that Consumer Prices Index inflation rose to 4% in December, up from 3.9% in November – marking the first increase since February last year.