Four tankers caught fire after hitting mines while attempting to navigate the Strait of Hormuz, Iran\u2019s armed forces said Thursday, a day after the US military said it had cleared key routes through the waterway.\n<\/p>\n
\u201cOver the past 24 hours, three violating oil tankers exploded and caught fire after striking mines while attempting to pass through the unauthorised southern route of the Strait of Hormuz,\u201d Iran\u2019s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps said in a statement.\n<\/p>\n
Later Thursday, Iran\u2019s army reported that another tanker had caught fire east of the strait, after hitting mines while \u201coperating in a restricted and dangerous area.\u201d\n<\/p>\n
The statement said the initial three vessels had \u201cswitched off all their radar and navigation systems\u201d and disregarded warnings from the IRGC navy.<\/p>\n
It was not immediately clear when the incidents occurred or which flags the tankers were flying.<\/p>\n
The British maritime agency UKMTO, meanwhile, said it had received reports of two incidents \u2014 one of a dhow \u201cinvolved in a maritime security incident\u201d that caught fire and sank, and another of a tanker \u201cstruck by an unknown projectile whilst completing an outbound transit of the Strait of Hormuz.\u201d\n<\/p>\n
In recent weeks, Iran has reported multiple vessels striking sea mines, prompting the US Central Command, which runs military operations in the region, to reaffirm on social media its insistence that all mines in \u201cprimary transit routes\u201d have been cleared.<\/p>\n
On Thursday, the spokesman for the IRGC, Hossein Mohebi, challenged the claim, saying on X, \u201cProve your Hormuz mine-clearing claim with independent evidence, not statements!\u201d <\/p>\n
Since the outbreak of the war on February 28, Iran has severely restricted traffic through the strategic waterway, which normally carries about one-fifth of global oil consumption.\n<\/p>\n
The United States has, in response, imposed a blockade on Iranian ports and helped tankers travel the strait. On Sunday, CENTCOM said it had helped Gulf countries export 1.5 billion barrels of oil via Hormuz since the summer.\n<\/p>\n
Iran considers ships using the southern corridor near the Omani coast unauthorised.\n<\/p>\n
In a statement on Thursday, the Guards said, \u201cThe unauthorised route through the Strait of Hormuz is mined, and that vessel owners and crews are responsible for transiting these routes and should not pay attention to CENTCOM\u2019s delusions on social media.\u201d\n<\/p>\n
The IRGC also said it had captured a US reconnaissance drone, in a separate statement.\n<\/p>\n
\u201cThe IRGC Navy announced that its electronic warfare unit had successfully captured a US MQM-170 drone during an offensive operation in the western Strait of Hormuz,\u201d the statement said.<\/p>\n
AFP\n <\/p>\n
Source: <\/p>\n
Four tankers caught fire after hitting mines while attempting to navigate the Strait of Hormuz, Iran\u2019s armed forces said Thursday, a day after the US military said it had cleared… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3747","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/globalnigerianews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3747","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/globalnigerianews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/globalnigerianews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globalnigerianews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globalnigerianews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3747"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/globalnigerianews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3747\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/globalnigerianews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3747"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globalnigerianews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3747"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globalnigerianews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3747"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}