Shipping through one of the world’s most important energy corridors suffered another heavy blow when six merchant ships came under attack on a single day, October 11, inside the Strait of Hormuz and in nearby waters. Advisories from UK Maritime Trade Operations, the British naval agency that tracks incidents at sea, described five tankers and one container ship hit within roughly 24 hours.
Four of them were hit by projectiles of unknown origin during their passage through the narrow waterway: a product tanker, a crude oil carrier and another tanker heading out of the Gulf, along with a container ship on its way in. A fifth tanker had already been hit on its port side earlier that day, damaging its steering gear room before it limped toward the Fujairah anchorage. The sixth incident happened outside the strait, off Oman’s Sohar anchorage in the Gulf of Oman, where a drone struck a tanker and local authorities helped evacuate the crew.
Several of the reports reached UKMTO only after the fact, a pattern that makes it hard for shipowners and insurers to keep an accurate picture of the danger. The agency has not named an attacker in its warnings. On Monday, however, the naval arm of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps said it had hit what it called an offending supertanker that had switched off its tracking system and ignored warnings, setting it on fire. The force described it as the third such strike in two days and warned that ships cooperating with the US military would face a forceful response.
The toll on trade is already severe. Daily transits through the strait have fallen to a fraction of their usual level of well over a hundred ships, while US forces continue their own blockade operations against Iranian shipping. For crews at sea, the message from regional security monitors remains blunt: further deliberate attacks are considered highly likely.
