Two oil tankers have caught fire after being hit by sea mines in the Strait of Hormuz, Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) has said. Each ship was carrying about 2 million barrels of crude oil.
Iran’s state news agency IRNA said a mine exploded as one ship passed through the strait on Saturday and it caught fire. A little later the second ship hit another mine and caught fire. The names of the two ships and the origin of the oil they carried were not immediately known.
IRNA claimed the two ships had switched off their radar and were trying to use a route not authorised by Iran. The IRGC claimed one ship was trying to cross the strait with US help and the other had broken down at sea.
Iran took full control of the Strait of Hormuz after the United States and Israel jointly began attacking Iran in late February. Since then Tehran has said ships must get Iran’s permission before passing through.
Before the war, about a fifth of the world’s oil supply passed through this vital waterway.
This week the IRGC navy commander, Rear Admiral Ali Azmayi, warned that ships keeping their navigation systems switched off would be treated as “enemies”.
The security firm Vanguard, the International Maritime Organization (IMO) and the UK’s maritime agency UKMTO said six ships were attacked in or near the Strait of Hormuz last Sunday, the most in a single day since the war began. Attacks around the waterway have risen sharply in the past two weeks.
Iran said it had stepped up attacks in response to the US naval blockade of its ports and the tough sanctions imposed last month.
The data provider Kpler said that while about 20.8 million barrels of oil passed through the strait on 8 October, the figure fell alarmingly to only 2.9 million barrels on 11 October. The disruption has pushed up energy prices and inflation sharply on world markets.
বাংলায় মূল প্রতিবেদন পড়ুন · Read the original Bengali report