People's Democracy

An Iraqi Foreign Ministry spokesman condemned the U S forces in the Gulf for committing "terrorist acts" by "seizing and sinking a vessel fully loaded with various commercial materials and goods" on November 18, the official INA news agency reported on November 22.

The spokesman said that the U S navy forced the vessel, with the flag of the United Arab Emirates, to stop in the Gulf international waters under "very bad weather conditions" and two armed U S soldiers boarded the vessel and put the vessel and its 14 crew members under control. They also forced the crew to change the course of the vessel, which eventually sank due to "extremely bad weather," the spokesman added.

The spokesman held the U S fully responsible for the incident and called on the United Nations to safeguard "peaceful and commercial navigation" in the international waters, INA said.

The Pentagon said on November 18 that an eight-member U S team boarded the apparently overloaded oil tanker Samra suspected of smuggling Iraqi oil, and the vessel later sank in northern Arabian Gulf.

The incident left one Iraqi dead as well as three Iraqis and two Americans missing, while the rest of the Iraqi crew were rescued, the Pentagon said.

U.S. officials said that they believed the vessel was carrying estimated 1,700 tons of Iraqi oil in violation of the UN sanctions, which have been imposed on Iraq for its 1990 invasion of neighbouring Kuwait. U S navy vessels and helicopters have been searching for those missing in the incident, they said.