Attackers struck a Panama-flagged oil tanker carrying 27 Indian sailors with limpet mines in the Strait of Hormuz on October 29. The blasts started a fire in the engine room, and the crew put it out, briefly disabling the ship.
The vessel is the MT Louise 1 and the Union Shipping Minister Sarbananda Sonowal said the Indian crew were completely safe with no injuries.
A projectile also hit the Liberia-flagged VLCC MT Arzanah the same day, and Sonowal confirmed that both Indian nationals aboard that ship were safe.
According to Reuters, a small boat pulled alongside the tanker, clamped the mines to its hull and left.
Maritime security sources said the boat placed two mines above the waterline on the tanker’s port side as it sailed out of the strait.
Nobody has identified the attackers.
The British navy agency UKMTO said the crew was safe, the fire was out, and the incident caused no environmental damage, and the agency filed the incident as Warning 187-26.
The agency placed the attack 25 nautical miles (46 km) northeast of Oman’s Khasab around 22:12 GMT.
“This is the first successful limpet mine attack in the waterway since the US war with Iran began in February,” Maritime sources said.
Shipping on this key oil export route has faced repeated attacks recently.
A limpet mine attempt in September failed because the explosive did not detonate.
The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) said on social media that three tankers exploded after touching mines on an unauthorised Southern route.
A report put the IRGC’s count at four tankers, but Iran also dared the US to prove its claim that the waterway is free of mines.
The strike has heightened fears for ships transiting Hormuz, which is controlled by Tehran.
Limpet mines are cheap, magnetic explosives, and they now threaten commercial vessels.
“A small craft approaching a moving tanker, planting explosives and slipping away is a serious security problem in the crowded lanes,” Marisks, A Greece-based risk group, said.
The group called the method cheap, low-tech, and very efficient.
The strait stretches almost 100 miles and narrows to 21 miles at its tightest point, and each direction’s shipping lane is about two miles wide.
Slow, loaded tankers share that space with smaller craft, so a fast boat closing on a hull can pass for routine traffic.
After the 2019 attacks near Hormuz, the US Navy said attackers had placed limpet mines above the waterline on the Kokuka Courageous.
The 2019 attack came during a standoff, but this one comes in the ninth month of open war.
Indian crews absorb much of the risk
India has watched this pattern build as this is the fifth attack on an Indian-crewed vessel in October alone.
Indian sailors have faced danger since the war’s first days.
When the Skylight was hit off Khasab on March 1, 15 of its 20 crew were Indian.
An Indian crew member died when the Safesea Vishnu was attacked near Basra, and India’s embassy in Baghdad evacuated the other 15.
The International Maritime Organisation has logged 122 confirmed incidents at sea in the Middle East and 24 sailors’ deaths as of October 30.
Iran does not need frequent strikes to move markets as Hormuz traffic runs at roughly 80 per cent of prewar levels, yet fear of attack has already driven up insurance costs.
In July, war risk premiums reached 3 to 10 per cent of a ship’s value, up from 0.25 per cent before the war, which is USD 3 million to USD 10 million for a USD 100 million tanker.
Bloomberg Economics economist Ziad Daoud estimates that heavier fighting could lift oil to between USD 120 and USD 130, and a small mine on a hull feeds directly into that risk pricing.
