2024-03-04 10:29:03
(CNN) — A Hong Kong telecommunications company said on Monday that four submarine communications cables off the coast of Yemen in the Red Sea were damaged, weeks following the official Yemeni government warned of the possibility of an attack on the cables by Houthi rebels.
Last week, reports appeared in the Israeli media outlet, Globes, regarding the damage to four cables: “SECOM,” “TGN,” the Asian-African-European Cable 1 (AAE-1), and the India-Europe Gateway Cable.” It indicated that the Houthi rebels Iranian-backed people were behind the attack.
The leader of the Houthi rebels, Abdul-Malik al-Houthi, rejected the accusations, saying: “We have no intention of targeting the submarine cables that provide internet to countries in the region.”
On Monday, Hong Kong Communications Company HGC said in a statement that four undersea cables in the Red Sea had been cut, adding: “We estimated that this would affect 25% of Internet traffic between Asia and Europe as well as the Middle East.”
The company added: “About 15% of Internet traffic in Asia heads west, while 80% of that traffic will pass through these submarine cables in the Red Sea.”
The company did not say who was responsible and how these cables were cut.
The company added: “In light of this situation, HGC has already taken the necessary measures to mitigate the severity of the damage to our customers. We have succeeded in developing a comprehensive plan to diversify and redirect the affected Internet traffic,” and added that Internet traffic has been redirected across land. The main one for China and the United States, as well as its “diversification” within the rest of the 11 submarine cable systems in the Red Sea.
The company said on Thursday that it had learned of recent damage to the wires, describing it as “an extremely rare event that had a significant impact on telecommunications networks in the Middle East, although its impact was limited to Hong Kong.”
Yemeni Information Minister, Muammar Al-Eryani, warned last month that Houthi rebels might cut submarine cables, describing this as “a serious threat to one of the world’s most important digital infrastructures.”
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