JERUSALEM, July 30 (Reuters) – An Israeli official has accused Iran of staging a drone attack on a tanker off the Omani coast on Thursday, Israel’s Channel 13 TV said on Friday.
Zodiac Maritime, the Israeli-owned company which manages the Mercer Street, a Japanese-owned Liberian-flagged tanker, earlier said the attack killed two crewmen, a British and a Romanian, and described it as suspected piracy.
“What we have here is a terrorist act by Iran,” the TV channel cited the unnamed Israeli official as saying.
“The Romanian fatality was apparently the captain of the ship, and the Briton a security man. The Iranians struck the ship’s body using an unmanned aerial vehicle,” he added.
There was no immediate reaction from the Iranian authorities about the accusation.
(Reporting by Dan Williams, Writing by Maher Chmaytelli; Editing by Alison Williams)
