The founder of the “Open Cables” initiative, Indian technical expert Sunil Tagari, said on Monday that the Yemeni Houthi militia cut 3 marine optical cables linking Europe and Asia.

Tagari said in a post on the X platform: “3 submarine cables were cut in the Red Sea between Jeddah and Djibouti: AAE-1, EIG, and SEACOM/TGN-Eurasia. Confirming that the Houthis cut cables in Yemeni waters.

According to the Techfinancials website, SEACOM, the leading provider of converged ICT services in Africa, experienced an outage affecting the submarine cable system on February 24.

The site added: “The outage is only on part of the cable that extends from Mombasa (Kenya) to Zaafarana (Egypt). At this time, SEACOM cannot confirm the cause of the disturbance but is working with its cable repair partner to evaluate the feasibility of repair in the area.”

The website said, “All other IP-based services destined for Europe and other regions have been automatically rerouted via alternative SEACOM routes on the Equiano, PEACE and WACS cable systems.”

The Israeli website Globes published a detailed report on four submarine cables that it said had been damaged, indicating links to Houthi threats.

The site said: “Four undersea communications cables were apparently damaged in the sea between Jeddah and Djibouti in East Africa. These cables are said to be: EIG, Seacom, AAE-1, and TGN.”

The Hebrew website added: “This is a severe disruption in communications between Europe and Asia, with most of the damage being suffered mainly from communications activity in the Gulf countries and India.”

After reporting malfunctions... Did the Houthis cut internet cables in the Red Sea?

Globes said, “According to the assessment, the damage to telecommunications operators is significant, and is not critical, because many other undamaged cables pass through the same area, connecting Asia, Africa and Europe.”

He added: “However, repairing such a large number of submarine cables may take weeks - at least 8 weeks according to estimates - and involves exposure to risks from (the terrorist Houthis).”

The website continued: “Telecommunications companies will have to search for companies that will agree to carry out the repair work and may pay them a high risk premium.”

Regarding the damaged cables, Globes said that EIG connects southern Europe to Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Djibouti, the UAE and India (it is called the Europe-India Gateway).

As for TGN Atlantic, it is an undersea cable that was deployed in the Atlantic Ocean in 2001 by the American company Tyco, and in 2005 it was sold for $130 million to the Indian company VSNL, now known as Tata Communications.

The AAE-1 cable, which has a communication capacity of up to 40 terabits per second, connects China and East Asia to Europe. The cable is owned by a consortium of companies, including China Unicom, Yemen's Telecom, and Western telecommunications companies such as British Telecom, according to Globes.

TeleYemen is the main Internet provider in Yemen and is controlled by the Houthis in Sanaa. Users had already reported a collapse in Internet services in Yemen yesterday, Sunday. The decline in service continues to this day.

On February 4, the Ministry of Communications of the internationally recognized Yemeni government issued a statement in which it condemned “the Houthis’ threats to target submarine cables,” and called on international telecommunications alliances to stop dealing with the Houthis and prevent the group from obtaining huge financial resources from the telecommunications sector.< /p>