Latest. Reuters has now carried Friday’s gas carrier claim, still with no vessel identified. The news agency reported that the Revolutionary Guard navy said a tanker carrying LNG struck a naval mine and suffered an explosion in the strait while using what the Guard called an unauthorized and dangerous route, with no details on the tanker immediately available. Reuters also cited Washington Institute for Near East Policy data counting at least 10 ships hit in the first 10 days of November, after 37 attacks in October, the highest monthly tally since the conflict began in late February.
Latest. Tehran has made a further mine claim, this time naming a gas carrier. The Revolutionary Guard press service said a vessel transporting liquefied gas ignored repeated warnings, attempted the prohibited and dangerous southern route and hit a mine several hours before RIA Novosti reported the statement on Friday, describing a very powerful explosion. The statement named no vessel, flag or owner, gave no casualty figure and described no damage beyond the explosion, and no independent source had confirmed the incident as of this update, so the claim is graded C, like Tehran’s earlier claims in this story.
Latest. The struck vessel off Ras Al-Khaimah has been identified, and maritime authorities now count four documented tanker attacks. The Liberia flagged crude tanker Dominica Prosperity was hit by an unidentified projectile in its engine room at about 1800 UTC on Wednesday, about 14 nautical miles northwest of Ras Al-Khaimah near Mina Saqr, UK Maritime Trade Operations said, and all 22 crew were evacuated by the UAE Coast Guard while firefighting continued on Thursday. India’s shipping minister Sarbananda Sonowal said 19 of the crew are Indian nationals and all are safe; Reuters reported the tanker is operated by South Korea’s Sinokor Maritime. In its November 12 advisory the Joint Maritime Information Center documented four tanker attacks in all: the Dominica Prosperity, the Fujairah Energy struck in the Arabian Gulf on November 10 with multiple crew injured, the NCC Fajr struck in the strait on November 11 north of Khasab, and an unidentified tanker struck on November 10 northeast of Lima, Oman. The center put recorded maritime security incidents since March 1 at 181 and estimated about 211 commercial vessels stationary at anchorages east of Hormuz. The perpetrators of the four projectile attacks have not been individually established, and none of the four documented incidents confirms Tehran’s separate claim of four tankers on fire.
Latest. Tehran now puts four tankers on fire. The Iranian army said on Thursday that two further tankers it deemed to be in violation, east of the strait, had caught fire after hitting a naval mine, according to a statement carried by state television and reported by Agence France-Presse. That takes Iran’s claimed total for the day to four, counting the two supertankers the Revolutionary Guard navy said exploded overnight on the southern route with more than 4 million barrels of oil ablaze between them. Neither statement named a vessel or a nationality, and no independent source had confirmed any of the four as of Thursday morning; the United States military has recently said all mines had been cleared from the strait.
Latest. A separate vessel strike in the corridor is independently reported. A vessel was hit by an unidentified projectile about 14 nautical miles northwest of the United Arab Emirates emirate of Ras Al-Khaimah on Wednesday, causing a fire in its engine room, Reuters reported, citing reports published Thursday by British maritime agencies. The UK Maritime Trade Operations agency said firefighting was under way and all crew had been evacuated, and the security firm Ambrey said the vessel was struck at the stern while leaving the Strait of Hormuz, with no injuries or pollution reported. Neither report links this vessel to Iran’s tanker claims.
Iran’s Revolutionary Guard navy said on Thursday that two supertankers exploded overnight in the Strait of Hormuz and are burning, after passing along the southern shipping route despite repeated warnings from the Guard’s Hormuz traffic control centre that the route is unauthorised and unsafe. The two ships were carrying more than 4 million barrels of oil between them, the statement said, carried by Iran’s state news agency IRNA.
The statement named no vessel, flag or owner, gave no casualty figure and stated no cause for the explosions, and no independent source had confirmed the incident as of early Thursday. The Guard navy warned that any ship in the Gulf or the strait that switches off its navigation systems and cooperates with the US military on the southern route would meet the same fate.
The claim is the latest in a series Tehran has made this week, after the Guard said two tankers hit naval mines on the same route on November 8 and Iran said it struck Oman’s Didamar Island, which helps guide ships through the corridor, on November 11.