TANKER STRUCK BY PROJECTILES NEAR QATAR, CASUALTIES REPORTED

A tanker was struck by multiple projectiles on Wednesday in an incident 51 nautical miles (94km) north of Qatar's Madinat ash Shamal, according to the United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations agency, which said casualties had been reported. The maritime intelligence firm Vanguard identified the vessel as the Acers, an Antigua and Barbuda-flagged oil and chemical tanker. The firm said the ship had been reported as laden with cargo since Saturday and was sailing towards the Strait of Hormuz, the waterway linking the Gulf to the Gulf of Oman. Further details of the casualties have not been disclosed.

The attack forms part of a pattern of strikes on merchant vessels in the region since war between the United States, Israel and Iran began in February, according to the UN's International Maritime Organisation, which recorded at least 24 seafarers killed in 93 confirmed incidents. The IMO said the last incident to result in casualties before Wednesday occurred on 9 September, when two sailors were killed in an attack on the Panama-flagged tanker El Gaia in the Strait of Hormuz, near Oman's Musandam peninsula. Martin Kelly, head of advisory at EOS Risk Group, said this was the first reported attack so far west of the Strait of Hormuz since that September incident. Vanguard separately reported a fire aboard another tanker, likely the Marshall Islands-flagged Dhalkut, in the Gulf of Oman near Fujairah in the United Arab Emirates; the cause is unclear and the UKMTO has not recorded an incident there.

The Strait of Hormuz, through which around a fifth of global oil and gas shipments normally pass, was effectively closed after the war began owing to Iranian missile and drone attacks on commercial vessels and a US naval blockade of Iranian ports. The US and Iran reached a preliminary agreement in June to end the war and reopen the strait, but it collapsed within weeks after Iranian attacks on shipping resumed and the US reinstated its blockade. Iran has targeted vessels using a southern route through Omani waters that avoids its preferred route through Iranian waters. The US military has been providing protection for tankers transiting the strait, through which crude exports have averaged 12 million barrels per day over the past two weeks, according to reported figures.