YEMEN: A boat packed with explosives rammed into a French supertanker off Yemen setting it on fire, a week before the second anniversary of the terrorist attack on the US warship USS Cole, the French embassy said.
French experts will go to Yemen to join the investigation into what caused an explosion that damaged the oil tanker, the office of French President Jacques Chirac said last night. Yemeni authorities set up a crisis unit and voiced fears of a major oil slick spreading along the Arabian Sea coast.
"The oil tanker was rammed by a small boat stuffed with explosives," as it came by an offshore terminal some 700 kilometres east of Aden, vice-consul Mr Marcel Goncalves said.
"It seems to be an attack in the same style as the USS Cole," he said of the hi-tech destroyer bombed by suspected al-Qaeda militants in Aden harbour on October 12th, 2000. Seventeen US sailors died and 38 were wounded in that attack.
A hole was blown into the side of the 330 metre-long tanker, named the Limburg, the embassy said. Twelve of the 25-man crew had been hospitalised with injuries in the eastern port city of Al-Mukallah, the embassy added.
Yemeni officials said all hands had been rescued and they were passing the night in a hotel.
But in France, the Limburg's owners Euronav, based outside Nantes, said they believed it was a deliberate attack and added that one of the ship's 17 Bulgarian crew was still missing. A Yemeni pilot was most likely missing as well, they said.
Eight of the crew were French.
"For us it's deliberate. Because to cut through the first hull of this double-hulled oil tanker, which is in good condition and only two years old, you need a very, very strong force," Euronav director Mr Jacques Moizan said.
"It still has to be confirmed . . . but a little boat which rams an oil tanker with a capacity of 500,000 tonnes, it's very surprising," added administrative director, Mr Alain Ferre.
The Limburg's captain, Mr Hubert Ardillon, who spoke by telephone to his headquarters, had seen the small vessel approach, Mr Ferre revealed.
Mr Ardillon could not see if the vessel carried explosives but Euronav management concluded that it was loaded with explosives given the extent of the damage, Mr Ferre added.
Yemeni officials denied the suggestion there were parallels with the Cole attack.
"The fire aboard the French tanker was caused by an explosion in one of the ship's reservoirs," said an official spokesman.
It appeared as a partial denial of the embassy version of events, but did not go into any detail or refer to the small vessel which rammed the supertanker.
The spokesman added that an inquiry had begun.
In Paris, the French foreign ministry offered no comment.