{"id":39723,"date":"2019-06-13T10:22:10","date_gmt":"2019-06-13T10:22:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=39723"},"modified":"2019-06-13T10:22:10","modified_gmt":"2019-06-13T10:22:10","slug":"two-tankers-evacuated-in-gulf-of-oman-after-reported-attacks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=39723","title":{"rendered":"Two tankers evacuated in Gulf of Oman after reported attacks"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

The US Navy’s Bahrain-based Fifth Fleet is assisting two tankers in the Gulf of Oman after\u00a0receiving distress calls from the vessels amid a “reported attack”.<\/span><\/p>\n

“US naval forces in the region received two separate distress calls at 6:12am local time and a second one at 7:00am,” the fleet said in a statement issued on Thursday. “US Navy ships are in the area and are rendering assistance.”<\/p>\n

The statement came after t<\/span><\/span>he United Kingdom<\/a>‘s Maritime Trade Operations, which is run by the British navy, put out an\u00a0alert<\/a> earlier on Thursday claiming an\u00a0unspecified incident had taken place in the area. <\/span>It did not elaborate further but said it was investigating the incident and urged\u00a0“extreme caution” amid heightened United States<\/a>-Iran tensions.<\/p>\n

The Reuters news agency, citing four shipping and trade sources, reported two tankers were evacuated following an unspecified incident. The sources identified the tankers as the Marshal Islands-flagged Front Altair and the Panama-flagged Kokuka Courageous.<\/p>\n

A statement by the Kokuka Courageous’ management company, BSM Ship Management (Singapore), said<\/a>\u00a021 crew members of the vessel abandoned the ship after an incident on board which resulted in damage to its hull starboard side.\u00a0The vessel was about 70 nautical miles (nearly 130km) from\u00a0Fujairah in\u00a0the United Arab Emirate (UAE<\/a>) and about 14 nautical miles (26km) from the coast of Iran<\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n

“The\u00a0Kokuka Courageous\u00a0remains in the area and is not in any danger of sinking. The cargo of methanol is intact,” the statement said. One crew member was injured during the incident and was receiving medical treatment on another vessel nearby, it added.<\/p>\n

Front Altair had been chartered by Taiwan’s state oil refiner CBC Corp and was carrying 75,000 tonnes of naphtha, a petrochemical feedstock, when it was “suspected of being hit by a torpedo” around noon Taiwan time (0400GMT), Wu I-Fang, CPC’s petrochemical business division CEO, told Reuters. He said all crew members had been rescued.<\/p>\n

Norway<\/a>‘s Frontline shipping company, which owns the Front Altair, said its vessel was on fire.<\/p>\n

Iranian media reported<\/a>, without offering any evidence, that there had been an explosion in the area targeting oil tankers. The Islamic Republic News Agency reported that\u00a0Iranian search and rescue teams had picked up 44 sailors from the vessels and taken them to the port of Jask.<\/span><\/p>\n

US-Iran tensions<\/strong><\/h2>\n

Thursday’s maritime alert comes about a month after an attack on oil tankers off the coast of the UAE.<\/p>\n

US National Security Advisor John Bolton said<\/a> Iran was likely behind the May 12 incidents, without offering evidence.<\/p>\n

The UAE, meanwhile, claimed the preliminary findings of a probe into the\u00a0attacks <\/a>revealed they were part of a “coordinated” operation likely carried out by a state actor, but stopped short of pinning the blame on any specific country.<\/p>\n

Iran has denied being involved in the incidents in May.<\/p>\n

Tensions between the\u00a0US\u00a0and Iran have simmered in recent weeks after more than a year of increasingly fractious relations unleashed by President Donald Trump’s decision in May 2018 to\u00a0withdraw from a landmark<\/a> nuclear deal.<\/p>\n

Under the 2015 agreement, Iran agreed to scale back its nuclear programme in exchange for the lifting of economic sanctions.<\/p>\n

Since pulling out of the nuclear deal, the White House has rolled out a “maximum pressure” policy against Iran. As part of that, Trump’s administration\u00a0reimposed punitive sanctions<\/a>\u00a0and moved to cut the country’s oil exports to zero, sending its economy into freefall.<\/p>\n

The US also\u00a0blacklisted<\/a>\u00a0Iran’s\u00a0Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps\u00a0(IRGC<\/a>) as a “terrorist group”, which prompted a tit-for-tat response from Tehran. Last month, Washington bolstered its military presence in the Gulf in response to an unspecified threat.<\/p>\n

Since then, a war of words between the rivals has continued to escalate, with Tehran accusing the US of waging “psychological warfare” and “economic terrorism” with its various moves.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

\n SOURCE:
\n Al Jazeera and news agencies<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The US Navy’s Bahrain-based Fifth Fleet is assisting two tankers in the Gulf of Oman after\u00a0receiving distress calls from the vessels amid a “reported attack”. “US naval forces in the region received two separate distress calls at 6:12am local time and a second one at 7:00am,” the fleet said in a statement issued on Thursday.…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":39724,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-39723","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-middle_east_news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39723","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=39723"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39723\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/39724"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=39723"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=39723"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=39723"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}