War in the Middle East: a commercial ship hit by a projectile off the coast of Qatar

A ship was hit by an unidentified projectile off the Qatari coast at dawn on Sunday May 10, according to a maritime agency. This attack comes after threats from the Iranian Revolutionary Guards, who announced they wanted to target “enemy” ships in the region.

According to the British maritime safety agency UKMTO, a bulk carrier reported being hit 23 nautical miles northeast of Doha by an “unknown projectile”. “A small fire broke out but was extinguished, there were no casualties. No impact on the environment was reported,” the agency said.

The Iranian Fars news agency, citing a source informed of the matter, affirmed that “the bulk carrier struck near the coast of Qatar flew the American flag and belonged to the United States”, without explicitly saying that it was Iran which targeted it.

“Any attack against Iranian oil tankers and commercial ships will result in a heavy response against one of the American centers in the region as well as against enemy ships,” declared Saturday the commander of the navy of the Revolutionary Guards, the ideological army of Tehran, according to television public Irib and the Isna agency.

These threats come after attacks carried out on Friday by the American army against two Iranian oil tankers in the Gulf of Oman, while Washington has imposed a blockade of Iranian ports since April 13. In the strategic Strait of Hormuz, some 1,500 ships and around 20,000 crew members remain “trapped”, according to the secretary general of the International Maritime Organization (IMO), a UN agency.