'Kamikaze drone' blasts oil tanker killing Brit and another crew member off coast of Oman

AN attack on an oil-tanker that killed a Brit crew member was carried out by a kamikaze drone, a US official has said.

The attack on the Mercer Street, which is linked to an Israeli billionaire, occurred off Oman in the Arabian Sea on Friday, and a Romanian crew member was also killed.

No one immediately claimed responsibility for the Thursday night raid on the Liberian-flagged tanker Mercer Street.

But a US official said it appears a so-called suicide drone was used in the attack, raising the possibility that a government or a militia group was behind it.

The US Navy rushed to the scene following the attack and was escorting the tanker to a safe harbour, a London-based ship management company said Friday.

Analysts said the attack bore all the hallmarks of tit-for-tat exchanges in the "shadow war" between Israel and Iran, in which vessels linked to each nation have been targeted in waters around the Gulf.

Meir Javedanfar, an expert on Iranian diplomacy and security at Israel's IDC Herzliya university, told AFP the attack was "most probably Iran".

Earlier this year, Iran tested kamikaze drones in two day exercises.

ONE WAY MISSION

A unnamed US official, told The Associated Press that the attack appeared to have been carried out by a “one-way” drone and other drones took part. 

London-based Zodiac Maritime, part of Israeli billionaire Eyal Ofer’s Zodiac Group, said the attack killed two crew members, one from the United Kingdom and the other from Romania.

It did not name them, nor did it describe what happened in the assault. It said it believed no other crew members on board were harmed.

“At the time of the incident the vessel was in the northern Indian Ocean, traveling from Dar es Salaam to Fujairah with no cargo onboard,” said Zodiac Maritime, naming ports in Tanzania and the United Arab Emirates respectively.

Beyond surveillance, Iranian drones can drop munitions and also carry out a "kamikaze" flight when loaded with explosives and flown into a target, according to a US official who spoke to Reuters.

Iran has developed a large domestic arms industry in the face of international sanctions and embargoes barring it from importing many weapons.

Western military analysts say Iran sometimes exaggerates its weapons capabilities, though concerns about its ballistic missiles contributed to Washington leaving the nuclear pact.

The attack Thursday night targeted the tanker just northeast of the Omani island of Masirah, over 185 miles southeast of Oman’s capital, Muscat.

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