Car transporter ship SINKS off Iran: Hunt for missing crew member as Emirati vessel with 30 on board capsizes in high winds
- The ‘Al Salmy 6’ ship capsized in Iran’s Persian Gulf after setting sail from Dubai
- Capsized in heavy winds and 14ft waves off the Iranian port of Asalouyeh
- All but one of the 30 crew members aboard have been rescued, with searches continuing for the final person
An Emirati cargo ship sank in Gulf waters off Iran, triggering a search and rescue operation in heavy seas on Thursday, which has recovered all but one of its 30 crew, Iranian media reported.
‘All but one of the 30 crew members have been rescued,’ the crisis management director for Bushehr province on Iran’s Gulf coast told state news agency IRNA.
He said the search was continuing for the final missing crew member with two rescue vessels combing the waters.
All but one of the 30 crew members have been rescued from this sinking ship off Iran’s Persian Gulf waters, with searches still being made for the final person
State media reported that the vessel – a car transporter – had capsized in heavy winds off the Iranian port of Asalouyeh.
‘An Emirati car transporter ship sank nearly 50 kilometres (30 miles) from the port of Asalouyeh,’ a local maritime protection official told IRNA.
‘Because of the unfavourable weather and high winds’ the ship sank before three rescue vessels could reach its location, the official said, adding that winds were gusting at more than 70 kilometres per hour.
The car transporter ship capsized after heavy winds came in at sea, nearly 30 miles from the Iranian port of Asalouyeh
There was no official word on the ship’s origin or destination, or the nationalities of its crew.
But MarineTraffic, an online tracking service, identified the ship as the ‘Al Salmy 6’ and said that it had been travelling from Dubai to Umm Qasr.
It said in a tweet that the vessel longer than a football field had ‘encountered treacherous weather’, with warnings at the time of waves as high as 4.4 metres.
Iran’s weather service had put out a red alert on Wednesday for high winds and heavy seas in the waters off Asalouyeh.
‘Al Salmy 6’, which is larger than a football field, toppled over after Iran’s weather service had put out a red alert on Wednesday, when warnings of waves as high as 4.4 metres were given
As well as a port, Asalouyeh is a major petrochemicals centre on the Gulf coast southeast of the city of Bushehr.
Despite its close relations with the West, the United Arab Emirates has remained a major trade partner of Iran.
The two countries downgraded diplomatic relations in 2016 following the severance of ties between Iran and Gulf Arab heavyweight Saudi Arabia, an Emirati ally.
But a rare visit to Tehran by a senior UAE official in December prompted talk of improving relations.