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An oil products tanker with a black and red hull and white superstructure moored alongside a refinery jetty

Middle East & North Africa

Gulf: Tanker hit by multiple projectiles north of Qatar, casualties reported

The UK Maritime Trade Operations agency (UKMTO) said a tanker was struck by multiple projectiles about 94 kilometres north of Madinat ash Shamal and that there are casualties. The origin of the fire and the ship’s flag have not been disclosed.

GEOPOLITIKI GEOPOLITIKINewsroom
2 min readUpdated

Archive photo: the oil products tanker MP MR Tanker 2 at the BP refinery jetty in Kwinana, Western Australia, October 2023. It is not the vessel involved in the incident, whose identity has not been disclosed. Photo: Calistemon, via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0. Converted to WebP.

A tanker was struck by multiple projectiles about 94 kilometres north of Madinat ash Shamal, on Qatar’s northern coast, according to the British maritime trade agency UKMTO (UK Maritime Trade Operations). The agency said there are casualties but gave no number of dead or injured, and added that the authorities are investigating the incident. It did not say where the projectiles were launched from, and the ship’s flag has not been disclosed.

The position lies inside Qatar’s exclusive economic zone. Qatar has not commented on the incident. An attack on a vessel in the middle of the Persian Gulf is unusual: in recent weeks no strike on a tanker had been reported in the western part of the Gulf, since most incidents take place in the Strait of Hormuz.

On Tuesday, October 6, UKMTO said that nine attacks on tankers had been recorded in the Strait of Hormuz since the start of October, a number equal to half of September’s total for the Strait and the Gulf combined. One of the most recent was the strike on the tanker On Peace on Tuesday off Oman, which left 12 injured.

Despite the attacks, crude exports from the Middle East are reported to have returned to pre-war levels. Since the US-Israeli war with Iran began on February 28, Tehran has effectively closed the Strait, while Washington maintains its blockade of Iranian ports.

Qatar Strait of Hormuz Tanker UKMTO

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