Iran’s army said two Iranian crew members were missing and several others injured after a collision Thursday in the Gulf involving an oil tanker which was later seized by its forces.
“Following the collision of an unknown ship with an Iranian vessel in the waters of the Persian Gulf two of the vessel’s crew went missing and several others were injured,” the army said in a statement.
“The unknown vessel, while acting in violation of international regulations to help the vessel and the injured, attempted to escape from the Persian Gulf,” it added.
“In this operation, the Binder destroyer of the navy of the army, by court order, seized the violator ship that was fleeing with the flag of the Marshall Islands and directed it to the coastal waters of the Islamic Republic of Iran,” the statement read.
In a statement issued earlier, the US Navy had said Iranian naval forces had seized the Advantage Sweet oil tanker while it had been “transiting international waters” in the Gulf of Oman.
“The Iranian government should immediately release the oil tanker,” the Bahrain-based US Fifth Fleet added, denouncing Iran’s “continued harassment of vessels and interference with navigational rights in regional waters”.
The waters where the ship was seized, near the Strait of Hormuz, are a narrow transit point for at least a third of the world’s seaborne oil.
In July 2019, the naval forces of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps seized the British-flagged oil tanker Stena Impero in the same waterway for allegedly ramming a fishing boat, and released it two months later.
