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Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard seized a Panamanian-flagged oil tanker in the strategic Strait of Hormuz on Wednesday.
This is the second such capture by Tehran in under a week amid heightened tensions over its nuclear programme.
The taking of the oil tanker Niovi renewed concerns about Iran threatening maritime traffic in the strait, the narrow mouth of the Persian Gulf through which a fifth of all crude passes, reports AP.
It also comes amid the disappearance of a crude oil tanker in Southeast Asia believed to be carrying Iranian crude oil amid reports it may have been seized by the United States.
The US Navy published surveillance footage shot by an aerial drone of about dozen Guard vessels swarming the tanker on Wednesday morning. The drone had been on a routine patrol in the area and saw the seizure, though the Navy did not receive a distress call from the Niovi itself, 5th Fleet spokesman Cmdr.
Those Guard ships “forced the oil tanker to reverse course and head toward Iranian territorial waters off the coast of Bandar Abbas, Iran,” the Navy said.
Bd-pratidin English/Golam Rosul
