SEOUL (Reuters) — The stern of a bulk carrier operated by South Korean shipper HMM was struck by two unidentified objects on May 4 while stranded in the Strait of Hormuz, the Foreign Ministry said on Sunday.<\/p>\n
A week ago, Seoul reported a blast and fire aboard the same vessel — the HMM Namu — in the strait, while anchored near the United Arab Emirates. No one was harmed in the incident.<\/p>\n
U.S. President Donald Trump said at the time the incident was caused by an Iranian attack.<\/p>\n
Seoul was investigating the incident, and the vessel was towed to a port in Dubai after the blaze on Monday, while an on-site inspection was conducted on Friday.<\/p>\n
It was not certain what the objects were, though they were captured on surveillance camera, the ministry said. Authorities said debris would be collected at the site for analysis.<\/p>\n
The objects hit the left stern around 3:30 p.m. Monday, Park Il, the ministry’s spokesperson, said on Sunday.<\/p>\n
The strike caused a blaze that damaged a 7-by-5-meter\u00a0area, Park said, adding that the incident was unlikely to have been caused by a sea mine or any problems with the vessel’s engine, generator or boiler.<\/p>\n
“We assume the cause of the fire was irrelevant to internal issues on the ship,” he said.<\/p>\n
South Korea was in contact with relevant countries, including Iran, over the incident, Park said.<\/p>\n
Iran has denied responsibility. It did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the objects outside of normal business hours.<\/p>\n
An HMM spokesperson declined to comment.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"SEOUL (Reuters) — The stern of a bulk carrier operated by South Korean shipper HMM was struck by…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":11248,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[8559,8556,1374,31,4574,8558,1762,1427,935,8557,8555],"class_list":{"0":"post-11247","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-korea","8":"tag-8559","9":"tag-hit","10":"tag-hormuz","11":"tag-korea","12":"tag-may","13":"tag-objects","14":"tag-says","15":"tag-ship","16":"tag-south","17":"tag-unidentified","18":"tag-was"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11247","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11247"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11247\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11248"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11247"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11247"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11247"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}