The attention of the world has been focused on the bloody tragedy unfolding in the Gaza Strip, as well as on the near-two-year calamity in Ukraine. But a perilous new blockage has lodged in the jugular vein of global trade: the Red Sea. Unless it's unblocked games github.io, the consequences could spell disaster for international economics — and for world peace. Yesterday, Defence Secretary Grant Shapps warned Britain is considering launching airstrikes against the Houthi rebels disrupting shipping at the southern end of the Red Sea, causing chaos to global trade routes.

Such a move, in concert with the U.S., would mark a dramatic escalation in this deteriorating crisis. Boats sail past the Galaxy Leader cargo ship, seized by the Houthis offshore of the Al-Salif port on the Red Sea in the province of Hodeidah, Yemen Defence Secretary Grant Shapps (pictured) warned Britain is considering launching airstrikes against the Houthi rebels disrupting shipping at the southern end of the Red Sea, causing chaos to global trade routes For these events are not some sideshow to the conflicts in the Middle East and unblocked at the school the Eurasian Steppe.

They could prove 2024's defining battle. The problem exploded several weeks ago, when the Houthis, a bloodthirsty Yemeni militia armed by the mullahs of Iran, began launching missile and drone attacks on cargo ships in the Red Sea. Some 40 per cent of Europe's trade with Asia, and 12 per cent of all the world's shipping traffic, passes through this critical route to the Suez Canal, meaning any disruption has a disproportionate effect on the global economy.  (In 2021, when container ship Ever Given ran aground and blocked the canal for six days, the cost to international trade was £700 million per day.) The Houthis, who overthrew Yemen's UN-recognised government in 2014, launched their most recent attacks after Hamas's October 7 atrocities and Israel's heavy-handed response to them.

The radical Shiite Houthis see Israel as their ‘ideal enemy', embodying everything they hate. Houthi leaders warned that any ships linked to Israel were ‘a legitimate target' — and made good on that threat in November when their terrorists hijacked a British-owned, Israel-associated ship, the Galaxy Leader, that was travelling from Turkey to India. An Iranian warship takes part in a joint naval military drill between Iran, Russia, and China in the Gulf of Oman, Iran, Russia and China in the Gulf of Oman last March In slick footage posted online, several masked Houthi fighters were seen landing on the ship's deck by helicopter, brandishing automatic weapons and holding its crew — none of whom is thought to be Israeli — at gunpoint.

As Mr Shapps pointed out yesterday, similar attacks increased by 500 per cent in November and December. On December 16, HMS Diamond fired a Sea Viper missile to destroy a Houthi attack drone: the first time in more than 30 years our Navy had shot down an aerial target. The Houthis, meanwhile, have repeatedly fired at Western vessels, damaging a Norwegian tanker and also targeting French warships.

Last month, the USS Carney downed four drones launched at commercial vessels by the Islamists, and just two days ago, the US navy sank three Houthi boats attempting to intercept a container ship, killing ten militants.