Iraqi Jets Hit Panamanian Tanker, Killing 2 Crewmen

Iraqi jet fighters today hit a Panamanian-registered tanker with an Exocet missile, setting the vessel ablaze and killing two crew members, Persian Gulf-based marine salvage executives reported.

The tanker was identified as the 21,166-ton Marianthi M., managed by the Greek shipping company Anastassiou. It was attacked about 60 miles south of the Iranian port of Bushehr, the executives said.

The nationality of the dead crewmen was not immediately confirmed, but they were believed to be Greek, the executives said.

Iraq said today that its warplanes also raided five oil and industrial centers across Iran and reported that Iran was shelling Basra, Iraq’s second-largest city.

The attacks came as U.S. Navy warships were escorting four reflagged Kuwaiti tankers through the gulf and followed weekend strikes that devastated one Iranian-chartered supertanker and left an unexploded Exocet missile in a second.

Also today, a pro-Iranian Iraqi Kurdish group claimed that it kidnaped three Italian engineers in northern Iraq and demanded the withdrawal of Italy’s eight escort ships from the Persian Gulf.

The claim came in a statement signed by the Iraqi Kurdistan National Union and delivered to a Western news agency in Beirut. The Iranian government supports Kurdish rebel factions in northern Iraq. There was no independent confirmation of the kidnaping claim.

The official Iraqi News Agency quoted a military spokesman as saying that at noon warplanes raided a “large naval target off the Iran coast.” The term is used by official Iraqi media when referring to attacks on tankers ferrying Iranian oil.

The agency said the targets struck on the Iranian mainland included a power plant and oil refineries in Esfahan, about 250 miles east of the border.