(Bloomberg) — A French containership has emerged in the Arabian Sea after last being seen in the Persian Gulf, indicating a rare crossing of the Strait of Hormuz by a Western European vessel.
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The CMA CGM Saigon, a small container ship owned by French shipping line CMA CGM SA, was observed on Tuesday afternoon in the gulf off Ras Al Khaimah in the United Arab Emirates, according to ship-tracking data. It then reappeared off the coast of Oman late Wednesday, signaling Colombo in Sri Lanka as its destination.
The gap in its signals suggests that the ship went through the strait undetected by turning off its transponders, or ‘going dark’. Tracking ships entering and exiting Hormuz is not an exact science and has been complicated by intense signal jamming in the area.
CMA CGM did not immediately respond to an emailed request for comment.
The CMA CGM Saigon’s voyage would make it one of the few ships linked to Western Europe to have made it through the strait unharmed since the war between Iran and the US started. In early April, CMA CGM managed to extract one of its large containerships, making it the first such vessel from the region to do so.
In recent days, Iran said it was exerting more control over Hormuz traffic by delineating new boundaries of control that put two major UAE ports on the Gulf of Oman in its target area. On Tuesday, CMA CGM San Antonio, also owned by the same company, was attacked while transiting the strait. The incident resulted in injuries among crew members and damage to the vessel.
The CMA CGM Saigon can hold as many as 1,700 twenty-foot equivalent units of containers.
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