Stephen Kalin News

Naval forces from the Saudi-led coalition fighting in Yemen foiled an attempted attack on a commercial ship in the Red Sea by the Iran-aligned Houthi group, a military spokesman said on Monday.A tweet by Saudi state television quoting Colonel Turki al-Malki did not name the ship or provide other details about the incident.Reporting By Stephen Kalin

The U.S. ambassador to Saudi Arabia said Washington should take what he called "reasonable responses short of war" after it had determined who was behind attacks on oil tankers off the coast of the United Arab Emirates.Iran was a prime suspect in the sabotage on Sunday although Washington had no conclusive proof, a U.S. official familiar with American intelligence said on Monday. Iran has denied involvement."We need to do a thorough investigation to understand what happened, why it happened, and then come up with reasonable responses short of war," Ambassador John Abizaid told reporters in the Saudi capital Riyadh in remarks published on Tuesday."It's not in (Iran's) interest…

Saudi Arabia announced last week it was suspending oil shipments through the Red Sea's Bab al-Mandeb strait after Yemen’s Iran-aligned Houthis attacked two ships in the waterway.To date, no other exporters have followed suit. A full blockage of the strategic waterway would virtually halt shipment to Europe and the United States of about 4.8 million barrels per day of crude oil and refined petroleum products.Western allies backing a Saudi-led coalition fighting the Houthis in Yemen expressed concern about the attacks, but have not indicated they would take action to secure the strait.

Yemen's Houthis attacked a Saudi oil tanker in the Red Sea, causing slight damage, an Arab coalition said on Wednesday, after the Houthis reported targeting a Saudi warship in the area.Saudi Arabia and its coalition of Sunni Muslim allies have been fighting in Yemen for three years against the Iran-aligned Houthis, who control much of north Yemen, including the capital, Sanaa, and drove a Saudi-backed government into exile in 2014.One of the coalition's main justifications for its intervention is to protect shipping routes such as the Red Sea…

Unidentified forces attacked a U.N. aid vessel off the main Yemeni port of Hodeidah at the weekend and started a fire in the engine room, port authorities said on Monday.The United Nations aid chief, Mark Lowcock, confirmed there had been an incident but said it was now over and everyone was safe, without elaborating.The vessel used by the U.N. World Food Programme (WFP) was attacked after delivering a shipment at Hodeidah, Yemen's Red Sea Ports Corporation said. The port is held by the Iranian-aligned armed Houthi movement which has taken large parts of the country in a three-year-old war.A WFP spokeswoman said an unidentified armed…

An explosion has damaged a Turkish vessel carrying wheat to Yemen's Houthi-controlled port of Saleef, with varying accounts attributing the incident on Thursday to an unexplained blast aboard the ship or a possible missile strike.A naval ship of a Saudi-led military coalition received a call from the captain of the vessel, the Ince Inebolu, who reported an opening had appeared in the middle of the ship on the left side, a spokesman for the alliance said."Coalition forces conducted a survey of the incident and visited the ship and found an explosion from the inside to the outside," the spokesman said in a statement.The captain said he did not know the cause of the damage, the spokesman said.

Britain and Saudi Arabia will monitor shipping lanes in preparation for opening Yemeni ports, the British foreign minister said on Wednesday after meeting his Saudi counterpart in Yemen, according to Saudi-run Al Arabiya television.   Boris Johnson also said London would seek a United Nations meeting on a political solution in Yemen, where Saudi Arabia is fighting a three-year-old war against the armed Houthi movement aligned with Iran.   Reporting By Stephen Kalin

Saudi Aramco and its partners have appointed Fathi K. Al-Saleem as chief executive of a joint venture to build a shipyard on the kingdom’s east coast, part of the Saudi Arabian government’s drive to diversify the economy beyond oil. The state-owned oil giant said in a statement on Friday that International Maritime Industries (IMI) had been officially launched in partnership with National Shipping Co of Saudi Arabia (Bahri), engineering firm Lamprell Plc, and South Korea’s Hyundai Heavy Industries Co.

The Saudi navy has captured three members of Iran's Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) from a boat seized last week as it approached the kingdom's offshore Marjan oilfield, the Saudi information ministry said on Monday. Relations between the two countries are at their worst in years, with each accusing the other of subverting regional security and support opposite sides in conflicts in Syria, Yemen and Iraq. "This was one of three vessels which were intercepted by Saudi forces. It was captured with the three men on board, the other two escaped," a statement from the ministry's center for international communications said. "The three captured members of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard are now being questioned by Saudi authorities," it said, citing a Saudi official.

evenues from the Suez Canal fell to $442.8 million in November from $482.3 million in October, Egypt's state information website said on Sunday. The fastest shipping route between Europe and Asia is one of Egypt's main sources of foreign currency. A major expansion of the 145-year-old waterway is planned. (Reporting by Yusri Mohamed, Reuters; writing by Stephen Kalin; editing by Jason Neely)

Egypt has ordered an investigation into an accident in which a Kuwaiti container ship and a fishing vessel collided in the Red Sea in an incident that killed 13 Egyptians. A statement from the prosecutor's office said initial enquiries showed the fishing boat capsized after it and the Kuwaiti ship hit each other after the latter has passed through the Suez Canal. The collision is at least the second such recent incident involving vessels passing through the Suez Canal. In September…

Revenues from Egypt's Suez Canal reached $482.3 million at the end of October, up from $469.7 million in September, the state information website said on Thursday. The fastest shipping route between Europe and Asia is one of Egypt's main sources of foreign currency. A major expansion of the 145-year-old waterway is planned. Reporting By Stephen Kalin

Gunmen in a fishing boat opened fire on an Egyptian naval launch which shot back, killing at least four of the attackers on Wednesday, security sources and state media said. No one immediately claimed responsibility for the assault in the Mediterranean north of the port of Damietta, near the Suez Canal. The military has faced attacks from Islamist militants based in the Sinai Peninsula further east, and smugglers also operate in the area. State-run newspaper Al-Ahram reported soldiers were wounded and a number of the gunmen had been arrested. The military was not available for comment. Two militant attacks in the Sinai Peninsula last month killed 33 security personnel…

Revenues from Egypt's Suez Canal reached $469.7 million in September, down from a record $510 million in August, the state information website said on Monday. The waterway, the fastest shipping route between Europe and Asia, is one of Egypt's main sources of foreign currency. A major expansion of the existing 145-year-old waterway is planned.   Reporting By Stephen Kalin

Egypt has transferred the assets of the Al-Arish port in the Sinai Peninsula from a civilian-run agency to the armed forces, citing national security reasons in an area where militant attacks have increased in the past year. The decision was made last week by then-interim President Adly Mansour but only announced on Monday, a day after former army chief Abdel Fattah al-Sisi - who ousted Islamist President Mohamed Mursi last July - was sworn in as the new head of state. The move seemed likely to reinforce critics' concern that Egypt is returning to strongman rule three years after a popular uprising raised hopes of democracy free from military influence.