Iranian missile strike test drill kills 19 sailors on support boat
● Fresh blow for Tehran regime as public anger grows during pandemic
An Iranian missile fired during a training exercise in the Gulf of Oman struck a support vessel near its target, killing 19 Iranian sailors and wounding 15, Iran’s military and state media said yesterday, amid heightened tensions between Tehran and Washington.
The statement significantly raised the death toll in Sunday’s incident from what had been reported just hours earlier, when Iran’s state media said at least one sailor was killed.
“The scope of the incident is under investigation by experts,” Iran’s navy said in a statement.
The Konarak, a Hendijanclass support ship, which was taking part in the exercise, was too close to a target during an exercise on Sunday when the incident happened, the reports said.
The vessel had been putting targets out for other ships to fire at. The media said the missile struck the vessel accidentally.
The friendly fire incident took place near the port of Jask, around 790 miles southeast of Tehran, in the Gulf of Oman, state TV said.
A local hospital admitted 12 sailors and treated another three with slight wounds.
Iranian media said the Konarak had been overhauled in 2018 and was able to launch sea and anti-ship missiles. The Dutch-made, 155-foot vessel has been in service since 1988 and had capacity of 40 tons. It usually carries a crew of 20 sailors.
Iran towed the Konarak into a nearby naval base after the strike. A photograph released by the Iranian army showed burn marks and some damage to the vessel, though the military did not immediately offer detailed photographs of the site of the missile’s impact.
“Onsundayevening…during naval exercises performed by a number of the naval force’s vessels in the waters of Jask and Chabahar, an accident happened involving the Konarak light support ship vessel, causing the martyrdom of a number of brave members of the naval forces,” the navy said in a statement yesterday.
The statement added that the Konarak had been taken to a port for “technical inspection”, but it made no reference to the circumstances of the accident. Iranian media had earlier reported the Konarak had been accidentally struck by an anti-ship missile fired by the Jamaran during an exercise near the port of Jask. “The vessel was hit after moving a practice target to its destination and not creating enough distance between itself and the target,” state television said on its website.
Iran regularly holds exercises in the region, which is close to the strategic Strait of Hormuz, the narrow mouth of the Persian Gulf through which 20 per cent of the world’s oil passes. The US navy’s 5th fleet, which monitors the region, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Iranian media rarely report on mishaps during exercises by the country’s armed forces, signaling the severity of the incident. It also comes amid months of heightened tensions between Iran and the US since US president Donald Trump unilaterally withdrew from Tehran’s nuclear deal with world powers in 2018 and imposed crushing sanctions on the country.
It marks the second serious incident involving a misfired missile by Iran’s armed forces this year. In January, after attacking US forces in Iraq with ballistic missiles, Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard accidentally shot down a Ukrainian jetliner, killing all 176 people on board.
It subsequently blamed the incident on human error.
Iran has also been battling a severe outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic, leaving trust between government and public at an all-time low.
Iranians have blamed the government for the scale of the outbreak by not enforcing an early lockdown to battle the virus and not being transparent about the number of people infected.