Two major freight firms including MSC Mediterranean Shipping Co, the world's biggest container shipping line, on Saturday said they would avoid the Suez Canal due to assaults on commercial vessels in the Red Sea.
War risk insurance premiums have risen as a result.
The Liberian-flagged MSC Palatium III was attacked on Friday with a drone in the Bab al-Mandab Strait off Yemen at the southern end of the Red Sea.
No injuries were reported, but the vessel suffered some fire damage and was taken out of service, MSC said in a statement. Another Liberian-flagged vessel, Hapag Lloyd's Al Jasrah, was hit by a missile, the U.S. military said. Denmark's A.P. Moller-Maersk on Friday paused all its container shipments through Bab al-Mandab until further notice, and it was joined on Saturday by the Swiss-based MSC and the French shipping group CMA CGM.
"The situation is further deteriorating and safety concern is increasing," CMA CGM said in a statement.
The German container line Hapag Lloyd had said it might do the same.
Britain also said one of its warships had shot down a suspected attack drone targeting merchant shipping. However, both the Palatium III and another MSC ship that was threatened, the Alanya, listed Jeddah in Saudi Arabia as their destination, based on data from the ship tracking and maritime analytics provider MarineTraffic.
Bab al-Mandab is one of the world's most important routes for global seaborne commodity shipments, particularly crude oil and fuel from the Gulf bound westward for the Mediterranean via the Suez Canal or the nearby SUMED pipeline, as well as commodities heading eastward for Asia, including Russian oil.
The rise in Red Sea war risk premiums translates into tens of thousands of dollars of extra costs for a seven-day voyage.
MSC said it would reroute some services around the Cape of Good Hope on Africa's southern tip, adding days to the sailing times of vessels booked to transit the Suez Canal.
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