Tanker Goes Down; First Sinking by Iran

The blazing hulk of a Singapore-registered fuel carrier sank Thursday in the waters off Oman, the first sinking of a tanker by Iranian gunboats since the war in the Persian Gulf flared three years ago.

In Baghdad, Iraq said its warplanes attacked another “large naval target”--its usual parlance for a supertanker--near the Iranian coast, raising fears of a new round of retaliation by Iranian gunboats against civilian shipping.

Shipping sources in the gulf reported that Iraqi warplanes hit an Iranian tanker, the 218,467-ton Susangird, with an Exocet missile Wednesday night, setting the ship afire. There were no immediate reports of casualties.

75 Combat Missions Flown

Iraqi planes also bombed western and southwestern Iran, according to the official Iraqi News Agency. It quoted a military spokesman as saying air force planes flew 75 combat missions against Iranian troops and economic targets. Two sugar factories, one close to Bakhtaran in western Iran and another at the southwestern city of Dezful, were identified as being among the targets hit.

Iran retaliated by shelling Iraqi cities. The official Islamic Republic News Agency said Iranian artillery gunners fired on Iraqi economic and military installations.

An American naval convoy, the 20th since the reflagging of Kuwaiti oil tankers began in July, was steaming north in the gulf Thursday toward Kuwait’s oil port. The tankers Gas King and Gas Princess were under escort.

The grim milestone in the three-year-old tanker war was passed just after dawn Thursday morning when the 85,129-ton Norman Atlantic sank in the Gulf of Oman just outside the Strait of Hormuz.

The Singaporean-registered ship had been attacked by Iranian gunboats on Sunday in the southern Persian Gulf, about 45 miles to the west of the spot where it finally sank. It had been towed through the Strait of Hormuz to protect shipping lanes in the narrow waterway.

Load of Naphtha Gas

The Norman Atlantic had been carrying a full load of naphtha gas from Saudi Arabia to Western Europe at the time of the attack. The 33 crewmen on board managed to escape shortly after the attack.

Although a milestone for the Iranians, the sinking of the Norman Atlantic appeared to have come about more by accident than by design.

As in many previous attacks on tankers, Iranian Revolutionary Guards fired rocket-propelled grenades at the ship. But rather than causing the customary minor damage, one grenade exploded in a compartment filled with naphtha fumes, setting off a massive explosion that eventually cracked the ship in two.

The fire continued to burn in the halves for four days. Tugboats followed the burning wreckage as it floated eastward, but were unable to approach because of temperatures higher than 3,000 degrees, according to the shipping sources.

Although the Iran-Iraq War began in September, 1980, the “tanker war” in the gulf did not start in earnest until 1984. The London-based Lloyd’s Shipping Intelligence estimates that 420 ships have been attacked and damaged in the gulf since the war began.

Khomeini’s New Will

In Tehran, Iran’s supreme leader, the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, was reported to have submitted a new “political will and testament” to the country’s Parliament, exactly five years after submitting his first will to the country.

The contents of the document were not disclosed, but Tehran radio said Khomeini had made “some changes” from his earlier will. The Iranian leader is 84 and believed to be in poor health.

The issuance of the new will touched off speculation among foreign Iran watchers that Khomeini had revised his old will because of a power struggle taking place among his deputies who actually oversee the Iranian government.