The Houthis carried out their threat: submarine cables were damaged in the Red Sea

Undersea data cables in the Red Sea have reportedly been damaged, months after Yemen’s Houthi rebels threatened to do so.

At least 15 submarine cables pass through the Bab el-Mandeb Strait in the southern Red Sea, which is only 26 km wide in some places.

The first reports of damage to submarine cables off the coast of Yemen began to emerge on Monday morning, when Israeli news outlet Globes stated that four cables (EIG, AAE-1, Seacom and TGN-EA) were damaged. Seacom has reportedly confirmed damage to the cable it operates between Kenya and Egypt.

“The location of the cable break is significant due to its geopolitical sensitivity and ongoing tensions, which creates a challenging environment for maintenance and repair operations,” Seacom said. “The team is currently working to establish a timeline for restoration and will communicate those plans.” to our clients.”

Globes attributed the outage to the Iran-backed Houthis and said the damage was “significant but not critical” as several other undersea cables serve the region. Seacom has already assured customers that it has redirected traffic to other cables.

Although there is a decent supply of cable repair vessels around the world, they have to be booked well in advance, so finding a vessel ready to work is not always possible. Repairing cables is also not easy: it takes time to find and remove the damaged segment and reconnect it, notes The Register.

This repair could be complicated by regional tensions. The Houthis attacked civilian ships and military targets in the Red Sea after the Israeli Defense Forces invaded Gaza as retaliation for Hamas terrorist attacks, media recall.

Therefore, some shipping companies have decided that the risks of attacks on their assets are too high and are currently avoiding the Red Sea, which increases delivery times. Peripherals supplier Logitech recently warned that its supply chain would face delays as a result of the Red Sea conflict.

Internet monitoring company NetBlocks also reported on Monday that Internet access in Djibouti, an African country on the southern shore of the Bab el-Mandeb Strait, was disrupted on Sunday and Monday. Members of the Internet outage mailing list also reported that they saw problems with cables running through the Red Sea, but messages on the list also dispute the timing of the incident, indicating that one of the cables mentioned in the outage report was EIG , was “offline for several weeks.”

Cloudflare, meanwhile, shows no signs of damage to the Red Sea submarine cable on its outages and anomalies page.

While it’s unclear what exactly is happening with undersea internet cables in the Red Sea right now, placing blame on the Houthis is not out of the question – Yemeni rebels threatened to damage communications infrastructure in late 2023.

Whether the group was able to accomplish this feat—the necessary undersea operations are believed to be the exclusive domain of major countries—is not clear.

Rear Admiral John Gower, a former Royal Navy submarine commander, told the BBC earlier this month that this would require a more sophisticated force than the Houthis, someone with underwater vehicles capable of detecting the cables.

“I think it’s a bluff unless it’s an attack on the terminal,” Gower said.

“I haven’t seen anything in Iranian [боевом порядке]”that could affect these cables, and certainly their submarines,” Tom Sharp, a former Royal Navy commander, told the BBC. While a dive would be possible, Sharp said he agreed with Gower that the threat most likely it was a bluff.

Underwater infrastructure is often under threat during international conflicts. Just last week, the European Commission (EC) said that the security of submarine cables needs to be improved. The European Commission said submarine cables were vulnerable and valuable and asked EU countries to “give submarine cable infrastructure the status of the highest possible national importance.”