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| Persian Gulf (Image: Wiki Commons) |
By Prashanth Parameswaran
Incident comes amid rising regional tensions.
Five Iranian boats fired shots across the bow of a Singapore-flagged tanker in the Persian Gulf on Thursday.
The captain of the Alpine Eternity, an oil products tanker, told Channel NewsAsia that five Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps Navy ships approached the vessel and several shots were fired. The captain refused orders to stop the vessel and head to the Iranian port of Abu Musa, choosing instead to head to Dubai’s territorial waters. The captain said he was 15 miles off the Iranian coast at the time of the incident – three miles outside Iranian territorial waters.
According to CNN, while the ship did contact coalition warships in the vicinity to ask for help and a P-3 was sent overhead while the U.S. Navy began moving, the incident was over before it could get there. The UAE did send three of its coast guard boats out to the cargo vessel. Owner South Maritime later said in the statement that the ship had safely reached the port of Jebel Ali, and that there was no serious damage to the vessel and none of the crew members sustained any injuries.
Read the full story at The Diplomat