Oman reports two sailors missing after attack on El Gaia tanker in Strait of Hormuz

Two sailors remain missing after the Panama-flagged oil tanker El Gaia was attacked while transiting the Strait of Hormuz. Omani naval forces rescued 23 crew members from the stricken vessel, which caught fire in its engine room following the strike, but the fate of two others is still unknown. Oman’s Maritime Security Centre confirmed the incident, which occurred roughly 103 nautical miles northeast of Musandam. The tanker, owned by UAE-based El Gaia Shipping Inc., is now being towed to an Omani port as the search for the missing crew continues. Competing narratives over what happened The attack itself took place on or around September 13, but the accounts of what actually hit the El Gaia diverge sharply depending on who you ask. Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps claims the tanker wandered into a restricted area and struck naval mines. US Central Command tells a very different story. CENTCOM has stated that the vessel was first rendered inoperable by an Iranian missile, then subsequently struck by an Iranian drone. That is not a subtle disagreement over details. It is two fundamentally incompatible versions of events, one describing an accident and the other describing a de...