A Japanese-owned chemical tanker was hit off the coast of India last Saturday by a drone “launched from Iran,” the Pentagon reported, in another sign of the growing risk to commercial shipping of traversing the Red Sea.
It is the first time the Pentagon has openly accused Iran of attacking ships directly since the start of Israel's war against the Tehran-backed Islamist group Hamas.
The one on Saturday was the usual target: a ship linked to an Israeli company. The weapon was also the usual one: an explosive drone. The area: about 200 miles southwest of Veraval, India. Episodes along important trade routes and tensions related to Tehran's verbal threat to “blockade” the Mediterranean.
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The Chem Pluto set sail with a cargo of crude oil from the Saudi port of Jubail and was heading towards Mangalore when it was hit by a flying bomb that caused a fire on board.. The crew managed to suffocate it while an Indian Coast Guard unit intervened to offer help.
The attack came amid a battery of drone and missile attacks by Yemen's Houthi rebels, also backed by Iran, in the crucial Red Sea shipping route.
The attack on Saturday in the Indian Ocean occurred around 10:00 a.m. local time (6:00 a.m. GMT) and caused no casualties on board the ship, although it did cause a fire that was extinguished, a Pentagon statement indicated, AFP reports.
The US military “remains in communication with the ship as it continues to sail toward its destination in India,” he added.
The Pentagon said the ship, owned by Japan's MV Chem Pluto, was sailing under the Liberian flag and operated by a Dutch company.. Ambrey, a maritime security company, said the “chemical tanker…. was affiliated with Israel” and was sailing to India from Saudi Arabia.
The Indian navy said it responded to a request for assistance and sent a plane and a warship to the scene of the incident, which no one immediately claimed responsibility for.
Last month, an Israeli-owned cargo ship was damaged in a drone attack allegedly carried out by the Iranian Revolutionary Guards in the Indian Ocean, according to a US official.
On the other hand, the American warship Laboon shot down four attack drones last Saturday “coming from areas controlled by the Houthis in Yemen,” the Pentagon's Central Command (Centcom) reported in a publication on X (the old Twitter).. No injuries or damage were reported.
The same source indicated that an attack drone also approached a Norwegian-flagged oil tanker, the MV Blaamanen, while another oil tanker, the Indian-flagged MV Saibaba, was “hit by a one-way attack drone with no injuries reported.”
Centcom said Houthi rebels fired two anti-ship ballistic missiles at Red Sea shipping lanes on Saturday, without reporting any hits.. “These attacks are the 14th and 15th against commercial ships carried out by Houthi militants since October 17,” Centcom said.