According to Iranian sources, new hostilities have broken out between the US military and Iranian forces in the Strait of Hormuz. The Fars news agency spoke on Friday of “sporadic fighting with American ships” that had been occurring for an hour. No further details were given.
The US military announced that it had attacked two Iranian-flagged cargo ships with “precision munitions” on Friday and rendered them unable to maneuver. The ships “Sea Star III” and “Sevda” tried to break through the US blockade, the responsible central command Centcom explained in the online service X. Specifically, a fighter plane fired “precision ammunition” into the chimneys of the ships.
There had already been fighting in the Strait of Hormuz that night. According to US information, the army attacked Iranian military facilities after Iran attacked three US warships that were trying to pass through the strait. While the US army spoke of “self-defense attacks”, a spokesman for the Iranian Foreign Ministry said the US had violated “international law and the ceasefire”.
Satellite images indicate a possible oil slick of around 45 square kilometers off the Iranian oil island of Kharg in the Persian Gulf. The gray-white streak was visible west of the eight-kilometer-long island in images taken by the European Copernicus satellites from May 6th to 8th, environmental researchers said. The pollution, about the size of Lake Ammersee, looks like an oil slick. The cause and exact origin are unknown. The US military and the Iranian UN mission in Geneva did not initially comment on the recordings.
According to Foreign Minister Marco Rubio, the United States expects a response from Tehran on Friday in its diplomatic efforts to end the Iran war. No response has been received yet, but “we should find out something today,” Rubio told reporters during his visit to Italy. “We expect an answer from them at some point today,” he emphasized. He hopes that it will be a serious offer. “The hope is that it is something that can get us into a serious negotiation process.”
