Iranian Navy thwarts attempt to hijack an oil tanker in the Gulf of Aden

Tehran-Sana

The Iranian navy thwarted an attempt to hijack an oil tanker in the Gulf of Aden, in the second operation of its kind in two weeks.

The Iranian news agency (IRNA) stated that "the team accompanying the Iranian army's naval force clashed yesterday with pirates who were trying to approach an Iranian oil tanker on its way to the Gulf of Aden before it entered the Bab al-Mandab strait."

The agency stated that "four suspicious boats, each carrying four to six armed men, approached the Iranian tanker, but the guard teams deployed in the area fired warning shots, which led to the attackers fleeing."

The Commander of the Iranian Army Navy, Admiral Shahram Iranian, had announced that its forces had responded to an attempted piracy targeting two tankers in the Gulf of Aden on the 16th of last October.

The Iranian Navy has been carrying out monitoring patrols since 2008 in this area to protect oil tankers and cargo ships belonging to Iran or other countries.