An oil tanker of reported Emirati ownership has been unaccounted for in the Persian Gulf for three straight days, a report claims.
The small vessel Riah, which is Panama-flagged, went off radars on Saturday, the Associated Press reported on Tuesday.
The agency said the tanker has turned off its tr@nsponder.
It also cited an unnamed Emirati official as saying that it “did not emit a distress call” either. The official also said the ship was “neither UAE-owned nor [UAE-]operated” and carried no Emirati personnel.
“We are monitoring the situation with our international partners,” the UAE official added though.
The 58-meter-long tanker would usually freight between Dubai and Sharjah, AP said.
The ship’s registered owner, the Dubai-based Prime Tankers LLC, told AP it had sold it to another company called Mouj Al-Bahar.
AP contacted the latter firm but was notified that it was not running any ships at all.
Samir Madani, the co-founder of shipping monitoring website TankerTracker.com, told Emirati paper The National that tracking Riah using satellite images was difficult because of its small size. He added yet, “Hopefully, it will pop up soon and everyone will be OK and nothing will have happened.”
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