Dubai: Commandos from Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard rappelled down from a helicopter onto an Israeli-affiliated container ship mostly manned by Indians near the Strait of Hormuz and seized the vessel on Saturday, the latest in a series of attacks between the two countries.
Seventeen Indian sailors are on board the ship which had a crew of 25.
The Middle East had braced for potential Iranian retaliation over a suspected Israeli strike earlier this month on an Iranian consular building in Syria that killed 12 people, including a senior Guard general who once commanded its expeditionary Quds Force there.
The Israeli war on Hamas in the Gaza Strip meanwhile is now six months old and is inflaming decades-old tensions across the whole region.
With Iranian-backed forces like Hezbollah in Lebanon and Yemen’s Houthi rebels also involved in the fighting, any new attack in the Mideast threatens to escalate that conflict into a wider regional war.
Iran’s state-run IRNA said a special forces unit of the Guard’s navy attacked the vessel, the Portuguese-flagged MSC Aries, a container ship associated with London-based Zodiac Maritime.
Zodiac Maritime is part of Israeli billionaire Eyal Ofer’s Zodiac Group. Zodiac declined to comment and referred questions to MSC. Geneva-based MSC later acknowledged the seizure and said 25 crew had been aboard the vessel.
IRNA said the Guard would take the vessel into Iranian territorial waters.
Iran’s Guard Seizes Ship With 17 Indians
