Iran says seized two ships seeking to cross Strait of Hormuz

TEHRAN: Iran’s Revolutionary Guards said Wednesday their naval forces had seized two container ships seeking to cross the blockaded Strait of Hormuz.

UK-based maritime security monitors confirmed that three commercial vessels had reported incidents involving gunboats in the strait, the international gateway for the Gulf oil and gas industry which US and Iranian forces are battling to control.

“The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps naval force this morning identified and stopped in the Strait of Hormuz two violating ships,” the Guards said in a statement. “The two offending ships… were seized by the IRGC’s naval forces and directed to the Iranian coast.”

They identified one ship as the Panama-flagged container ship MSC Francesca and the Liberia-flagged Epaminodas. The tracking site Marine Traffic showed the last known positions of both vessels closer to the Iranian coast of the strait, northeast of Oman.

Earlier, the British maritime security monitor UKMTO said one container ship reported it was fired upon by an Iranian Revolutionary Guards (IRGC) boat 15 nautical miles northeast of Oman, causing damage to the bridge but no casualties.

Separately, a third ship was fired upon and stopped in the water eight nautical miles west of the Iranian coast, UKMTO said, without identifying the attackers.

British Security firm Vanguard Tech identified it as the Panama-flagged containership Euphoria, which it said was “transiting outbound of the Strait of Hormuz”.

The US Navy is attempting to block vessels heading to and from Iranian ports, while Tehran has said vessels must seek permission to leave or enter the Gulf through Hormuz, a route that in peacetime accounts for a fifth of the world’s oil and gas exports along with other vital commodities.