The Red Sea is a 1200-mile narrow strip of water located between northeastern Africa and the Arabian Sea which separates the coast of Suez-Egypt, Sudan and Eritrea from Saudi Arabia and Yemen, connecting the Gulf of Aden with the Arabian Sea through the Bab-el-Mandeb Strait.

Yemeni President Rashad Al-Alimi warns the UN General Assembly: 'Anyone who underestimates this militia today should imagine what will happen tomorrow when the Red Sea and maritime trade routes become permanent hostages in the hands of terror.

The Houthi rebels have been launching missile and drone attacks on Israel and on ships in the Red Sea in response to the war in Gaza, saying they were acting in solidarity with Palestinians. Their attacks over the past two years have upended shipping in the Red Sea, through which about $1 trillion of goods passed each year before the war.

After Yemen's Huthi rebels claimed to have struck an Israeli-owned tanker in the Red Sea, images of burning vessels were shared in social media posts falsely claiming it showed the attack at the end of August 2025.

NetBlocks, which monitors internet access, said “a series of subsea cable outages in the Red Sea has degraded internet connectivity in multiple countries,” which it said included India and Pakistan. It blamed “failures affecting the SMW4 and IMEWE cable systems near Jeddah, Saudi Arabia.”

The Houthi rebels have been launching missile and drone attacks on Israel and on ships in the Red Sea in response to the war in Gaza, saying they were acting in solidarity with Palestinians. Their attacks over the past two years have upended shipping in the Red Sea, through which about $1 trillion of goods passed each year before the war.

The Red Sea outage is a reminder that much of our digital life depends on a few strands of glass running under the ocean.