Ship traffic through Bab el-Mandeb fell hard again as Houthi forces tightened their grip on the strait. Preliminary Kpler figures reported by The National put Friday crossings at 15, down from 30 a day earlier, with vessels carrying crude, grains, and steel. That one-day drop sits on top of a corridor already running near 26 ships a day earlier in the week, against a pre-crisis average near 70, according to Anadolu Agency ship-tracking tallies.
The geography behind the numbers is blunt. Yemeni government sources told AFP, carried by Türkiye Today, that Houthi fighters took Mayyun Island, also known as Perim, after coastal advances through Mocha, Dhubab, and Murad. Perim sits in the middle of the Gate of Tears and splits the shipping lanes between Yemen and the Horn. Control there does not automatically close the waterway. It does raise war-risk pricing, crew refusal risk, and the odds that more owners will keep sending Asia-Europe cargoes around the Cape of Good Hope.
For Ethiopia that is not abstract foreign news. Djibouti still moves the bulk of the country’s seaborne trade. When Bab el-Mandeb premiums climb and Cape diversions become the rational default, container rates, fuel costs, and schedule slip land on Modjo as surely as they land on Gulf oil desks. Saudi-linked traffic is under particular pressure after the Houthis’ maritime embargo on kingdom-tied ships, and Yanbu export swings already showed how quickly Red Sea oil volumes can fall when insurers and charterers reprice the corridor. Landlocked importers pay the quiet tax either way.
Abiy Ahmed’s regime keeps talking about sovereign sea access while the insurance market and AIS counts write a different brief. Until underwriters treat Bab el-Mandeb as ordinary water again, Cape diversion freight and war-risk markups remain the daily surcharge on everything that has to pass the strait to reach Horn ports.
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