Oman evacuated 25 crew members from the Panama-flagged RITI after a fire aboard the tanker in the Strait of Hormuz. The rescue was announced on October 30. The cause of the fire remains unclear, amid competing Iranian and US statements about shipping routes and mines in the waterway during the war.
Oman’s Maritime Security Centre announced on October 30 that 25 crew members had been rescued from the RITI, a Panama-flagged tanker that caught fire in the Strait of Hormuz.[1], [2]
The announcement concerned the evacuation of the people aboard the vessel. MarineTraffic, a service that tracks commercial shipping, identified the RITI as a crude oil tanker. The cause of the fire had not been established.[1]
Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, a branch of the country’s armed forces, separately claimed to have stopped tankers for using routes it had not authorised. Iranian authorities described one vessel as carrying 2 million barrels of oil. No confirmed identification linked those vessels to the RITI, and the statements did not establish how its fire began or who was responsible.[1]
Brad Cooper, head of US Central Command, the military command responsible for the region, said the main international shipping routes had been cleared of Iranian mines. His statement and Iran’s accounts concern rival claims over navigation through Hormuz during the war involving the United States, Israel and Iran. The tanker rescue took place amid those disputes over passage and mines; the cause of the RITI fire remained unverified.[1]
