The largest ship in the Iranian navy caught fire and later sank Wednesday in the Gulf of Oman under unclear circumstances, Iran's semiofficial news agencies reported.
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The blaze began around 2:25 a.m. and firefighters tried to contain it, the Fars news agency said. The vessel sank near the Iranian port of Jask, some 1,270 kilometers (790 miles) southeast of Tehran on the Gulf of Oman near the Strait of Hormuz – the narrow mouth of the Persian Gulf.
Photos circulated on Iranian social media of sailors wearing life jackets evacuating the vessel as a fire burned behind them. State TV and semiofficial news agencies referred to the Kharg as a "training ship." Fars published video of thick, black smoke rising from the ship early Wednesday morning.
The Kharg serves as one of a few vessels in the Iranian navy capable of providing replenishment at sea for its other ships. It also can lift heavy cargo and serve as a launch point for helicopters. The ship, built in Britain and launched in 1977, entered the Iranian navy in 1984 after lengthy negotiations that followed Iran's 1979 Islamic Revolution.
Iranian officials denied speculation on social media that the vessel was making its way to Venezuela together with another ship, both of which are believed to function as forward operating bases for the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.
They also offered no cause for the fire aboard the Kharg. However, it comes after a series of mysterious explosions that began in 2019 targeting ships in the Gulf of Oman.
The sinking of the Kharg marks the latest naval disaster for Iran. In 2020 during an Iranian military training exercise, a missile mistakenly struck a naval vessel near the port of Jask, killing19 sailors and wounding 15. Also in 2018, an Iranian navy destroyer sank in the Caspian Sea.
In April, Iran said one of its vessels, the Saviz, had been targeted in the Red Sea, after media reports that the ship had been attacked with limpet mines.
At the time, Saudi news network Al Arabiya, citing a report in The New York Times, reported that Israel informed the United States that it had struck the Saviz in retaliation for earlier Iranian strikes on Israeli-owned cargo vessels.
It was the latest in a reported series of attacks on Israeli- and Iranian-owned cargo ships since late February in which the two arch-enemies accused each other of responsibility.
Meanwhile, an Iranian fighter jet developed a "technical problem" and crashed on Tuesday, killing both of the aircraft's pilots, state TV reported.
The report said the incident happened in the country's southwest, in the city of Dezful, 444 kilometers (270 miles) from the capital, Tehran and near the border with Iraq.
The report said an investigation was underway as to what had caused the malfunction of the Iranian air force's F-5 fighter jet. The deadly malfunction reportedly occurred before takeoff.
Iran's air force has an assortment of US-made military aircraft purchased before the 1979 Islamic Revolution. It also has Russian-made MiG and Sukhoi planes. Decades of Western sanctions have made it hard to maintain the aging fleet.
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