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Bab el-Mandeb — Arabic for “Gate of Tears” — is the narrow throat separating Yemen on the Arabian Peninsula from Djibouti and Eritrea on the Horn of Africa. It spans roughly 14 miles at its narrowest, and Perim Island splits the passage into two shipping channels barely a couple of miles wide each. Every vessel entering or leaving the Red Sea must funnel through it: south to the Gulf of Aden, the Arabian Sea, and the refineries of Asia; north to the Suez Canal, the Mediterranean, and Europe. It is the only maritime door between the Indian Ocean and the Mediterranean short of sailing around the entire African continent.

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