Watch CBS News

Was Tanker Target Of Terrorist Attack?

A fire that raged for hours aboard a French oil tanker has been put out, but still unanswered is the question of whether the tanker was the target of a terrorist attack.

Yemen launched a probe into an explosion that gutted the French-flagged supertanker Limburg in the Gulf of Aden which the owners and French diplomats fear could have been a terrorist attack, CBS News reports.

"The fire has been extinguished. We believe the explosion happened from within the tanker, but investigations are still underway," a Yemeni official said Monday on condition of anonymity.

Strong winds during the night had pushed the tanker further into the sea and away from its destination, Mina al-Dabah, a port close to the city of Al Mukalla, about 200 miles southeast of the capital San`a.

Yemeni Prime Minister Abdul-Kader Bajammal formed a special committee to investigate the blast. The Yemeni official said Yemeni and French investigators would cooperate in the probe.

In Paris Monday, the anti-terrorism section of the prosecutor's office opened a preliminary investigation, judicial sources said, adding that agents from France's counter-terrorism service were to head for Yemen to investigate.

Operations at the port were normal Monday, with no security forces or coast guard in sight and commercial fishing boats heading out to sea.

France's foreign minister said Monday that the possibility that the fire was deliberate has not been ruled out.

"Nothing has been excluded," Dominique de Villepin told RTL radio.

A day earlier, the French foreign ministry said it did not have "enough elements to allow us to formulate a ... hypothesis which would point to a terrorist attack."

"It's a serious issue, a serious matter, and we have to wait for the first concrete results of the police research," said ministry spokesman Francois Rivasseau.

According to Yemeni officials, the captain of the Limburg said the fire started on his tanker and was followed by an explosion while crewmen tried to get the blaze under control.

In France, officials with Euronav, the company that owns the Limburg, said their understanding was that the captain saw a small fishing boat pulling up to the tanker before the blast at 9:15 a.m. local time. The officials speculated the fishing boat could not have caused such a huge blast unless it was carrying explosives.

There were also reports the explosion occurred as a pilot boat was preparing to escort the tanker into Mina al-Dabah.

"We believe it was a deliberate act. It was not an accident," Euronav director Jacques Moizan told The Associated Press.

In 2000, a small boat laden with explosives rammed the USS Cole as it refueled at another Yemeni port, Aden, setting off a blast that killed 17 U.S. sailors. That attack was blamed on Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda terrorist network.

Mina al-Dabah, about 200 miles east of Aden, is relatively quiet and is mainly used by tankers to load oil.

Yemen has been eager to emphasize its commitment to the U.S.-led war on terror and shake off its reputation as a hotbed of extremism it is believed to have been a longtime base for suspected al Qaeda members and is the bin Laden family's ancestral home.

Security has been tightened at Yemeni ports since the attack on the Cole.

The Bahrain-based Maritime Liaison Office, which coordinates communication between the U.S. Navy and the commercial shipping community in the Gulf and Arabian Sea, issued an advisory in September warning ships of the possibility al Qaeda was planning attacks on oil tankers.

The U.S. Navy's 5th Fleet has aircraft carriers, destroyers and other ships in the Gulf and Arabian Sea. A Bahrain-based spokesman for the fleet said Sunday the tanker fire had prompted no changes in U.S. security measures.

Euronav said the Limburg's crew of 25 included eight French and 17 Bulgarians. One Bulgarian was missing and the rest of the crew were in a hotel in Yemen, said Alain Ferre, Euronav's financial and administrative director.

Ferre said some crew members jumped into the water and were rescued while others first tried to put out the fire.

The Yemeni government asked the Canadian oil firm Nexen Inc. to help clean up an oil spill that resulted from the fire and explosion.

The Malaysian firm Petronas said in a statement Monday that it had chartered the Limburg. Petronas said it loaded about 400,000 barrels of crude in Saudi Arabia and was planning to load 1.5 million more barrels in Yemen, cargo purchased for the Malaysian Refining Co. in Melaka, Malaysia.

In Malaysia Monday, a police official said on customary condition of anonymity that officials there did not believe the Limburg fire was a terrorist attack on Malaysia — a largely Muslim country that has cracked down on Islamic militants and terror suspects.

Malaysia will not send its own investigative team to Yemen for now, officials said, but would rely on investigations by the Yemenis and the French.

View CBS News In
CBS News App Open
Chrome Safari Continue
Be the first to know
Get browser notifications for breaking news, live events, and exclusive reporting.