UKMTO: Explosions near a ship off Yemen’s coast in the Red Sea — crew safe

The British agency UK Maritime Trade Operations (UKMTO) said on Sunday it had received a report of an incident about 60 nautical miles (about 110 kilometres) south of Yemen’s Mokha, where the crew of a tanker saw multiple explosions near the ship, as Al Jazeera reports in its liveblog on the U.S.–Iran war.

According to the agency, the crew is safe and no environmental impact from the incident has been reported. UKMTO gave no further details on the nature of the explosions.

The incident comes at a moment of high tension off Yemen’s Red Sea coast, where Yemeni government forces are conducting operations against the Houthis, who control parts of the coast and have threatened commercial shipping in the region.

The Red Sea and the Bab al-Mandeb strait remain among the world’s most dangerous maritime routes, with repeated attacks on commercial ships since the start of the U.S.–Iran war, which has forced many companies to divert their vessels onto longer routes.