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An Iranian warship was hit by a “friendly fire” missile during naval exercises, killing 19 sailors, state media and the military said Monday, amid tensions with the United States in Gulf waters.
The Konarak was hit on Sunday afternoon near Bandar-e Jask, on the southern coast of the Islamic Republic, the state television website said.
“The ship was hit after moving a practice target to its destination and not creating enough distance between it and the target,” he said.
Nineteen crew members died and 15 were injured in an “accident” during the exercises, the military said, without providing further details.
The ship had been towed ashore for “technical investigations,” the army said in a statement, asking people to “avoid speculation” until more information is released.
The Tasnim news agency said in an English tweet that the missile was fired by another Iranian warship.
“Friendly fire” struck the Konarak after it was accidentally shot by the “Moudge” Jamaran “frigate with a missile during the live-fire exercise in the Jask area in #PersianGulf waters.”
The 15 wounded were hospitalized in Sistan and Baluchistan, said Mohammad-Mehran Aminifard, head of the province’s medical university.
Two of the sailors were in intensive care, he told the semi-official ISNA news agency.
A video posted by Jam-e-Jam daily showed that what he said was the Konarak partially underwater and burning while being towed by a boat.
The army chief and Iran’s foreign minister offered their condolences to the families of the sailors in separate statements.
– Trump threatens to ‘shoot down’ –
The Konarak is a logistics support ship built in the Netherlands and purchased by Iran prior to the 1979 Islamic revolution.
Weighing 447 tons and 47 meters (154 feet) long, the Hendijan-class ship is equipped with four cruise missiles, according to state television.
It was not immediately clear how many crew members had been on board the warship at the time of the accident.
Iran and its arch enemy the United States have exchanged spikes in the past year for a series of incidents involving its forces in the sensitive waters of the Gulf.
Their last confrontation on the high seas occurred on April 15, when the United States accused Iranian ships of “harassing” their navy ships on the waterway.
President Donald Trump tweeted that he had ordered the US Navy. USA That it “shoot down and destroy each and every Iranian gunboat if they harassed our ships at sea.”
His Iranian counterpart Hassan Rouhani replied that Washington “should not conspire against the Iranian nation every day,” adding that the Islamic republic had “protected this waterway for thousands of years.”
– Airline disaster –
The friendly fire incident occurred near the Strait of Hormuz, a choke point for one third of the world’s maritime oil.
The escalation of tensions between Iran and the United States last year saw mysteriously attacked ships, downed drones and oil tankers seized in the strait.
In July 2019, Iran’s Revolutionary Guards captured British flagged oil tanker Stena Impero on the waterway for allegedly ramming a fishing boat and released him two months later.
The guards confiscated at least six other ships that year for alleged fuel smuggling.
Tensions have escalated since 2018 when Trump pulled the United States out of a multinational deal that froze Iran’s nuclear program and reimposed crippling sanctions on its economy.
Iran’s armed forces in January mistakenly shot down a Boeing 737 passenger jet bound for Kiev shortly after takeoff from Tehran, killing all 176 people on board.
The military acknowledged the catastrophic mistake and said it occurred when Iran’s air defenses were on high alert after firing a missile shower at US troops stationed in Iraq.
Iran launched the missiles in retaliation for the murder of its top general Qasem Soleimani in a drone attack in Baghdad.
