BANGKOK, March 12 — Three crew members believed to be trapped aboard a Thai bulk carrier hit by projectiles while travelling through the crucial Strait of Hormuz were yet to be rescued today, the vessel’s owner said.
Iran’s Revolutionary Guards said yesterday they had struck the Thai-registered Mayuree Naree, as well as a Liberia-flagged vessel, in the strait because the ships had ignored “warnings”.
The Thai ship was struck yesterday morning while transiting through the Gulf waterway, after departing Khalifa port in the United Arab Emirates.
The two projectiles damaged the Mayuree Naree’s engine room and caused a fire, Thai transport company Precious Shipping said in a statement yesterday evening.
“Three crew members are reported missing and believed to be trapped in the engine room,” it said, adding that authorities were working to rescue them.
“Unfortunately, that remains the case,” the firm’s managing director Khalid Hashim told AFP today.
“We still have not been able to get anyone to board our ship, even though the fire has been extinguished,” Hashim said in an email.
“We are trying different avenues to get onboard.”
The Omani navy rescued 20 of the vessel’s sailors yesterday, the Thai navy said.
Thailand’s foreign ministry said all 23 crew members were Thai.
All Thai vessels have left the Strait of Hormuz and Bangkok had “protested against the violence done to the commercial ships”, the ministry’s deputy spokesman Panidol Patchimsawat told reporters today.
“Please be assured that we are on a mission to find the missing three,” he added.
Since strikes by the US and Israel against Iran in late February ignited the Middle East war, the Islamic republic has launched its own attacks against its oil-exporting neighbours.
The strikes have threatened shipping in the Strait of Hormuz and plunged the global energy economy into crisis.
The strait is a crucial waterway through which a fifth of global oil supplies usually pass. — AFP
