Middle East
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Dubai: ‘Terrorist Blast’ Hit tanker in Gulf Strait
- Sat, Aug 07 2010 09:37:18 AM
Dubai, Aug 7 (AFP): An explosives-laden boat carried out a “terrorist attack” that damaged a Japanese oil tanker in the Strait of Hormuz last week, the United Arab Emirates said yesterday, raising security fears for the vital waterway.
“The investigation and examination conducted by special teams have shown the tanker was attacked with explosives, prepared using traditional methods, which were loaded on a boat that approached the ship,” a UAE coastguard spokesman said on the official Wam news agency.
“UAE explosives experts... found a dent on the starboard side above the water line and remains of home-made explosives on the hull”, when they inspected the ship off the UAE port of Fujairah, the official said.
“Probably the tanker had encountered a terrorist attack from a boat loaded with explosives,” he was quoted as saying on the agency’s English-language website.
In Tokyo, Japanese Transport Minister Seiji Maehara said he had instructed ministry officials to ask the UAE authorities for details of the investigation, as requested by the prime minister.
“Without prejudgment, we will carry out our analysis on the cause of the incident,” Maehara said.
Japan “should take a firm stance” in response to such incidents because they threaten the country’s oil imports, the minister added.
Japan sources some 90% of its oil from the Middle East, much of it from the Gulf, where the tanker was sailing from.
A group on Tuesday claimed a suicide bomber had struck the ship owned by Mitsui OSK Lines, which reported that tanker the M Star appeared to have been hit by a blast on July 28 in international waters between Iran and Oman.
US monitoring group SITE Intelligence said the Brigades of Abdullah Azzam claimed in a message on pro-militant websites that it had placed a suicide bomber on the tanker, identifying him as Ayyub al-Taishan.
The little-known group with links to Al Qaeda last October claimed responsibility for a rocket salvo into northern Israel from Lebanon, as well as for bombings in Egypt’s Red Sea resort of Sharm El-Sheikh and two other resorts in 2004 that killed a total of 98 people.
It said the attack on the tanker was carried out in the name of Omar Abdul Rahman, the Egyptian “Blind Sheikh” imprisoned in the US for his role in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing in New York.
The tanker attack sought “to weaken the infidel global order which is thrust unto Muslim lands and which loots its resources”, the group said, according to SITE.
Mitsui OSK maintained the damage was caused in an attack despite reports that it had been caused by a freak wave.
The Japan-bound vessel - crewed by 16 Filipinos and 15 Indians - was carrying 270,000 tonnes of crude oil from the Gulf but did not suffer a spill.