Two sailors missing after tanker attacked in Strait of Hormuz, Oman says
Iran says El Gaia caught fire after hitting mines, but the US says the oil tanker was struck by a missile and then a drone.
Two sailors are missing after an attack on a tanker in the Strait of Hormuz, Oman says
Oman’s Maritime Security Centre said a fire broke out in the engine room of El Gaia after the attack.
Two sailors are missing and 23 others have been rescued after an attack on an oil tanker in the Strait of Hormuz, Oman said.
The Maritime Security Centre in Oman said the Panama-flagged El Gaia was being towed to an Omani port on Tuesday after a fire started in its engine room, adding that the vessel was targeted 1.3 nautical miles (2.4km) north of the Musandam peninsula.
On Monday, Iran’s Revolutionary Guards said the tanker struck naval mines and caught fire while travelling through what they described as a restricted and unsafe route.
The US military, however, said the Iranian account was false. It said the tanker was hit by an Iranian missile last month and again by a drone over the weekend.
The UK Maritime Trade Operations centre said it had received a report of a fire on board a vessel that was hit by an unknown projectile while crossing the Strait of Hormuz in the early hours of Sunday.
Earlier this month, Iran made a similar claim about an incident that killed two Filipino sailors on a Saudi-owned oil supertanker in the vital waterway.
The Revolutionary Guards said the vessel, Sidr, caught fire after hitting a naval mine. But Saudi authorities said it was targeted by Iran, and maritime security firms reported that it was struck by projectiles north of Musandam.
The International Maritime Organization says at least 22 seafarers have been killed in 79 confirmed incidents in the Strait of Hormuz and the rest of the Middle East since the start of the US and Israel’s war with Iran at the end of February.
The Strait of Hormuz, through which a fifth of global oil and gas shipments usually pass, has effectively been closed because of Iranian missile and drone attacks on commercial vessels and a US naval blockade of Iranian ports.
The US and Iran reached a preliminary deal in June to end the war and reopen the strait, but it fell apart within weeks after Iranian attacks on shipping resumed and the US restored its blockade.
Iran has said it will not relinquish some degree of control over the waterway and has targeted vessels using a southern route through Omani waters that avoids its preferred route through Iranian waters.