Houthis accuse US, UK of disrupting Red Sea communication cables

Houthi Yemeni group accused on Saturday the US and UK of causing an outage in international communication cables in the Red Sea.

This came in a statement issued by the Ministry of Transportation in the Houthi government (not internationally recognized), published by the Saba News Agency affiliated with the group.

“The hostile acts against Yemen by naval military units belonging to Britain and the United States have caused an outage in the maritime cables in the Red Sea, jeopardizing the security and safety of international communications and the natural flow of information,” the statement said.

It considered that “such hostile acts pose a significant challenge to the stability of communication infrastructure and negatively impact technical, informational, and technological services that rely on these cables worldwide.”

The statement added that the United States and Britain “are using hostile and illegal methods in their war against Yemen to serve the Zionist enemy (Israel), in order to continue committing genocide against the Palestinian people in Gaza.”

The ministry further emphasized that the Houthi group is “keenly interested in the security and safety of maritime cables in Yemeni waters and the interests of the countries associated with them, based on respect for international laws, agreements, and treaties, and the common interests between Yemen and other countries.”

The Yemeni group expressed its readiness “to provide all services and grant necessary permits to internet service provider companies to repair and maintain the outage in maritime cables in the Red Sea.”

There was no immediate comment from Washington or London regarding these accusations.

On Monday, the international communications company SEACOM announced an outage in its infrastructure in the Red Sea, affecting the cable system in Africa.

The international communications company said in a statement that the eastern African part of the cable system crossing the Red Sea malfunctioned on Feb. 24, affecting the flow of traffic (data) between Africa and Europe.

An international coalition led by the United States has been conducting airstrikes targeting Houthi sites in various areas of Yemen since the beginning of this year in response to Houthi attacks in the Red Sea, a vital shipping lane and global supply chains.

In the face of airstrikes from Washington and London, the Houthis have announced that they now consider all American and British ships as military targets and condition the cessation of their attacks on ending the war on Gaza.

Israel ignored the International Court of Justice's provisional ruling and continued its attack on the Gaza Strip, killing at least 30,320 Palestinians, mostly women and children, and injuring 71,533 since Oct. 7, according to Palestinian health authorities.

Israel has pounded the Gaza Strip since a cross-border attack by Hamas, which Tel Aviv says killed nearly 1,200 people.

The Israeli war on Gaza has pushed 85% of the territory's population into internal displacement amid acute shortages of food, clean water, and medicine, while 60% of the enclave's infrastructure has been damaged or destroyed, according to the UN.

Israel is accused of genocide at the International Court of Justice. An interim ruling in January ordered Tel Aviv to stop genocidal acts and take measures to guarantee that humanitarian assistance is provided to civilians in Gaza.

Hostilities have continued unabated, however, and aid deliveries remain woefully insufficient to address the humanitarian catastrophe.