A Panama-flagged tanker carrying 27 Indian seafarers was reportedly targeted with limpet mines in the Strait of Hormuz, causing a fire on the vessel.
All Indian seafarers aboard the crude oil tanker – MT Louise 1 – were “completely safe with no injuries”, Union shipping minister Sarbananda Sonowal said in a post on X.
He said these two Indians aboard VLCC MT Arzanah were also reported to be safe. This was the first reported successful use of such explosives in the waterway since the US-Iran conflict began, Reuters reported. It was not immediately clear who was behind the attack.
The incident took place on Thursday, 25 nautical miles (46 km) northeast of Oman’s Khasab, British navy agency United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations said. The IRGC said that one of the tankers, carrying 2 million barrels of crude oil, had hit a naval mine. In his post on the MT Louise 1, Sonowal said a Liberia-flagged tanker carrying two Indian nationals was also hit by a projectile attack. The Louise 1 was also hit in July with naval drones in the Black Sea by Ukrainian forces. Greece-based maritime risk management group Marisks said in a note Friday that these were first deployed in West Asia in 2017 and used against tankers in Hormuz subsequently.
A small boat attached two limpet mines to the hull of the Panama-flagged tanker, according to three maritime sources cited by Reuters, which caused a fire and temporarily disabled the vessel. It came after a separate attempt in September to use such devices, which did not detonate, two of the maritime sources cited by Reuters said. Ukraine’s SBU security service cited its alleged role in transporting Russian oil and being part of what it calls a shadow-fleet of tankers deployed by Moscow to keep oil exports flowing as the reason for the attack, according to the Reuters report. Their use is primarily because “they are cheap and easily available”, the group said.
However, Iran’s Revolutionary Guards Navy said on Friday that four oil tankers had caught fire and exploded in the Strait of Hormuz while attempting to use what it said were unauthorised routes, news agency Reuters reported.
