The support ship Kharg sank on Wednesday morning near the southern Iranian port of Jask on the Gulf of Oman near the Strait of Hormuz….reports Asian Lite News
Iran’s large navy ship Kharg caught fire and later sank Wednesday in the Gulf of Oman, the Iranian Students’ News Agency (ISNA) reported.
Following the spread of the fire on the vessel, the crew safely disembarked, the report said, adding that efforts to save the ship failed, the Xinhua news agency reported.
The support ship Kharg sank on Wednesday morning near the southern Iranian port of Jask on the Gulf of Oman near the Strait of Hormuz.
The vessel has been used in training missions for more than four decades, said the report. It did not give details on the cause of the blaze.
Last week, Indonesia has released an Iranian oil tanker seized by the country’s coast guards earlier this year.
The MT Horse, belonging to the National Iranian Tanker Company that had been detained in Indonesian waters since January 24, was released on Friday.
The vessel was released after a legal battle and efforts by senior Iranian officials and “has now resumed its mission”, it added.
In January, Indonesia announced that its coast guard had “seized the Iranian-flagged MT Horse and the Panamanian-flagged MT Freya vessels for suspected illegal oil transfer in the country’s waters”.
A spokesman for the Indonesian Maritime Security Agency, Colonel Bakamla Wisnu Pramadita, claimed the two tankers concealed their identity by not showing their national flags, turning off automatic identification systems and did not respond to a radio call, the Tehran-based Press TV reported.
Saeed Khatibzadeh, spokesman for the Iranian Foreign Ministry, said at the time that Tehran was “waiting for more reports from the Indonesian government on the seizure of the Iranian oil tanker”.
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