A fire broke out on the maritime vessel ASL Bauhinia in the Red Sea this week following an explosion onboard, but at the time of writing it is not believed to be result of a Houthi missile attack.

The 2,000 teu Hong Kong flagged containership is now understood to be drifting, after being abandoned by its crew when the fire spiralled out of control on Wednesday.

The vessel’s position at the time of the explosion led to suspicions of a Houthi attack. While travelling through the Red Sea, the ship was just 140 miles south of the port city of Hodeida in Yemen, which is controlled by the terrorist group.

Houthi spokespeople had announced this month that they were limiting attacks to Israeli linked vessels ‘only’ during the Gaza ceasefire, as covered by our previous article here, and according to reports in The Loadstar, Israeli carrier ZIM has been involved in the vessel’s operations up until September.

However, despite the cause for suspicion, many media reports state that dangerous goods are believed to have caused the explosion. There have been numerous ship fires and explosions caused by dangerous goods in the past 2-3 years, so this does seem to be a plausible explanation.