Oil tanker Polar Adventure. Photo: © Steven Pavlov / Wikimedia Commons / CC BY-SA 4.0
Two oil tankers and a tugboat caught fire in separate incidents around the Strait of Hormuz, Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps said Thursday, according to Reuters. The account has not been independently confirmed by JBizNews.
The report, if confirmed, adds to the risks facing tankers and the crews who operate them. The short account does not identify the vessels or provide casualty figures, leaving the scale of the incidents unclear.
One tanker struck a mine while trying to cross a passage south of the strait, the IRGC said, according to the Reuters report carried by The Jerusalem Post.
A second vessel, described as a supertanker, caught fire while exiting the eastern part of the waterway, according to the same account. A tugboat approaching that vessel to help extinguish the fire also caught fire, the IRGC said.
The Guard described the ships as having attempted to use “unauthorized routes.” That description is the IRGC’s claim. The report does not establish who laid the mine or what caused the fires involving the second tanker and the tugboat.
Nor does the account establish that Iran attacked the vessels, that all three struck mines or that any vessel was destroyed. It provides no confirmed market reaction or estimate of damage.
The report was published early Thursday in Israel, late Wednesday in New York. Further confirmation of vessel identities, crew safety and the causes of the fires was not available in the Reuters account.
JBizNews Desk | Global
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