Oil tanker under attack off Syrian coast

QAMISHLI, Syria (North Press) – An oil tanker was attacked by a “drone” off the Syrian coast, which caused a fire in one of its storage tanks, the Syrian Ministry of Oil said on Saturday. 

“Firefighting teams controlled a fire that broke out in one of the tanks of an oil tanker off the mouth of the oil in Baniyas,” the official Syrian News Agency, SANA, stated.  

“The fire broke out after the tanker was exposed to what is believed to be an attack by a drone coming from the direction of Lebanese territorial waters,” it added.

Meanwhile, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said, “an explosion hit an oil tanker coming from Iran, near the mouth of oil in the coastal city of Baniyas.”  

In the past two years, oil tankers in the Gulf region and the Red Sea were subjected to mysterious attacks, where Saudi Arabia and the US held Iran responsible, which, in turn, denied.