Video: Incident off Baniyas — drone attack or accident?
Three killed in alleged attack, but Iran denies one of its vessels has been hit, citing welding accident.
At least three mariners are said to have died in an alleged drone attack on an Iranian tanker off the Syrian coast. The incident was first reported by the Syrian State news agency, SANA, on Saturday.
Iran’s al-Alam TV then reported that the vessel was an Iranian tanker that had been bringing fuel to Baniyas. The report was then contradicted by Iran’s semi-official Tasnim news agency which denied the vessel was Iranian.
Tasnim later said the vessel was the 46,000-dwt, 1999-built Panamanian-flagged Wisdom, operated by Pelagos Navigation of Lebanon. The agency said the fatalities were cause by a welding accident.
TankerTrackers tweeted that “the tanker seen burning…off the coast of Baniyas is not an Iranian vessel, but is Beirut-registered.”
