Iran says two oil tankers hit mines in Hormuz

Latest. Iran’s Guards issued a further claim on Saturday evening. In an announcement carried by the state agency IRNA and reported by Reuters, the Guards said two tankers that were trying to cross the strait by a prohibited route hit mines, exploded and caught fire on Saturday evening, after a first tanker had hit a mine in the eastern part of the strait on Saturday morning, three tankers in total for the day. No vessel was named, no casualties were reported, and Reuters said it was not in a position to independently verify the reports. The evening account puts Saturday’s claimed total at three, the figure Al Jazeera carried earlier in the day, against the two in AFP’s account of the Guards’ first statement below.

Latest. The United Nations has put its own count on the shipping crisis. Briefing the Security Council on Friday, Assistant Secretary-General Khaled Khiari said the International Maritime Organization had recorded 134 confirmed incidents in the Strait of Hormuz and the wider Middle East maritime area as of November 11, that 25 seafarers had lost their lives, and that October saw the highest monthly number of incidents against commercial shipping since February. Energy export volumes out of the Gulf have largely been restored, including through alternative routes, but maritime shipments remain below pre-conflict levels, he said, calling the present arrangements costly, unpredictable and unsafe and saying the situation cannot be allowed to become the new normal. He also noted there have been no major military exchanges since early September and welcomed the resumption of diplomatic contacts in Doha and elsewhere. Al Jazeera, reporting the same briefing and Saturday’s mine claim, carried the Iranian navy’s warning, via state broadcaster IRIB, that any offending tanker travelling in the restricted area east of the strait will be set on fire by hitting naval mines, and put the number of tankers in Saturday’s claim at three, against the two in AFP’s account below.

Latest. The Guards made a second mine claim early on Saturday. Its navy said two oil tankers exploded and caught fire after striking a naval mine in the strait, in a statement carried by Iranian state broadcaster and reported by AFP via Arab News. The tankers had switched off their radar and positioning systems and were secretly trying to transit an unauthorized route, the statement said; one was a supertanker, and no names or origins were given. No shipowner, flag state or tracker has confirmed the incident, and the US military says it has cleared the main routes through the waterway of mines. The claim follows Friday’s claimed mine strike on a liquefied gas carrier in the south of the strait, for which the Guards released footage of a smoke plume.

Latest. A second tally has put the same October peak on the record and added the month’s traffic scale. Lloyd’s List Intelligence counted 37 ship attacks around the Strait of Hormuz in October, the highest monthly total since the war began, and 418 transits by non-Iranian tankers, also a monthly record, Yonhap News Agency reported. At least 14 attacks had been confirmed in November by the time of its report, and Lloyd’s assessed that Hormuz traffic was recovering but not back to normal, with the risk of further deliberate attacks very high.

Iran’s Revolutionary Guards navy said a tanker carrying liquefied natural gas struck a naval mine and suffered an explosion in the Strait of Hormuz on Friday while using what it described as an unauthorized and dangerous route, Iranian state media reported, according to Reuters. No details on the tanker were immediately available, and no independent source has confirmed the incident.

The claim follows Iranian media reports on Thursday that four oil tankers were hit by explosions in the waterway after ignoring warnings and entering areas Iran considers restricted. At least 10 ships were hit in the first 10 days of November, after 37 attacks in October, the highest monthly tally since the conflict began in late February, according to data from the Washington Institute for Near East Policy cited by Reuters.