A drone hit a US-owned gas storage tanker at Egypt’s Mediterranean port of Damietta, British maritime security firm Ambrey said in an initial assessment yesterday, in what could mark a widening of the Middle East conflict beyond the areas directly involved in the fighting.A statement from Egypt’s petroleum ministry confirmed a fire at the port but made no mention of a drone attack. It was not immediately clear who was responsible.
The drone hit floating storage tanker Energos Winter, causing a fire that then spread to another vessel, three trading sources familiar with the incident said. The fire was dealt with immediately with no casualties, the petroleum ministry said.
The incident came amid a sharp escalation in the conflict, with Iran firing missiles at US forces in Jordan and the United States and Saudi Arabia striking Iran-backed armed groups in Iraq.Alongside Yemen’s Houthi group declaring a naval blockade on Saudi Arabia, the latest exchanges suggest the conflict is spreading further than it has since US and Israel started bombing Iran in February.US President Donald Trump vowed to retaliate against Iran for firing on US troops days after he halted air strikes.“We’ll be hitting them hard,” Fox News quoted Trump as saying.
Iran confirmed overnight that it had fired on US bases in Jordan and at ships in the Strait of Hormuz, and also spurned an Omani proposal to jointly manage the strait.Trump had said operations against Iran would last only a few weeks when he launched them in February but fighting has now gone on for five months with no end in sight.Oil prices shot up yesterday in one of the sharpest spikes of the five-month war. Brent crude futures rose more than 8% to push the benchmark well above $90 a barrel, reversing much of a plunge earlier this week when Trump had unexpectedly halted US strikes over the weekend.
The joint US-Saudi attacks also mark the first time Riyadh has publicly joined strikes alongside Washington.Iraq’s Popular Mobilisation Forces, powerful Iran-backed paramilitary groups incorporated into the Iraqi security forces, said at least 20 members were killed and 32 wounded in US-Saudi strikes targeting several bases across Iraq.Iraqi men shouted sectarian slogans and “Death to America!” as they carried the bodies of slain fighters in body bags.
Washington and Riyadh said they struck the Iran-backed armed groups in Iraq in retaliation for drone attacks on Saudi oil targets launched from Iraq.It was the first major US military action in the Middle East since last Friday, when Trump abruptly suspended an intensive bombing campaign after 13 days, having been advised by commanders that the strategy had run its course.US officials have privately cautioned that resuming major combat operations against Iran would carry risk given the negative impact on stocks of munitions.
The Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington-based think tank, estimated this week that the US military has fewer than 1,000 Patriot interceptor inventories and fewer than 250 THAAD interceptors-- two key air defense systems.Though Iran denies its forces have directed strikes from Iraqi territory, Iranian newspaper Hamshahri reported that four Iranian Revolutionary Guards advisers had been killed in the strikes on Iraq.The strikes on Iraq expose a dangerous rift in that volatile country.
The government is one of the few in the world to balance close military and diplomatic ties with both Tehran and Washington, but those divided loyalties are a constant source of tension and frequent domestic unrest.The office of Prime Minister Ali al-Zaidi, who took power just two months ago, urged the parties involved to avoid escalation and said he wanted to keep the country out of regional conflicts.
The Iraqi presidency denounced the strikes on the paramilitaries as “an unacceptable attack and a flagrant violation of Iraq’s sovereignty”, while also calling for a halt to attacks by armed groups against Iraq’s neighbours.Hours before launching the joint attacks with Saudi Arabia on Iraq, the US military said its air defences had averted a surprise Iranian attack on US troops in the region.