The evacuation of around 11,000 mariners stranded by the closure of the Strait of Hormuz has been suspended after an attack on a vessel in the Gulf of Oman, the International Maritime Organization (IMO) says.
The UN’s maritime agency said earlier this week it would begin evacuating 600 ships and their crews that were trapped by the US-Iran war, after Washington and Tehran agreed a preliminary deal to end the conflict.
But a cargo ship was damaged by an unknown projectile off the Omani coast in the strategic strait on Thursday, prompting the IMO to halt the operation.
“I have decided to temporarily pause (the evacuation plan’s) implementation in order to reconfirm that the necessary safety guarantees continue to be in place for the ships on our evacuation list and all those in the region,” IMO Secretary-General Arsenio Dominguez says in a statement.
The vessel that was hit on Thursday was not traveling under the IMO’s evacuation framework, which began on Tuesday evening, Dominguez says.
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