Mine threat to U.S. convoy

Press, 2 October 1987, Page 6

Mine threat to U.S. convoy

NZPA-Reuter Bahrain American warships pushed north through the Gulf yesterday after warnings of a new mine threat in the upper reaches of the waterway. Four warships were escorting two fleet-supply vessels on what the Pentagon described as a routine mission to replenish United States forces

patrolling Gulf tanker channels. On their way up the Gulf, the ships passed the reflagged Kuwaiti gas tanker Gas Prince as it sailed out under United States naval protection. At the same time British minesweepers were searching for mines after a scare in a busy tanker channel about 20 miles off Dubai in the southern

Gulf. The Bahrain-based Middle East Navigation Aids Service (MENAS) warned shipping of four new dangerspots in the northern Gulf between Bahrain and Kuwait “The co-ordinates given were for an area considered likely to contain mines,” a spokesman for MENAS told Reuters. He did not say who had

alerted the agency to the threat The co-ordinates covered small areas about 100 miles north of Bahrain and west of Iran’s Farsi Island, a base from which Iranian Revolutionary Guards have launched hit-and-run raids on ships of Iraq’s Arab allies. One of the danger areas was near where a Panamanian supply ship, the

Marissa-1, hit a mine and sank last week with the loss of four crewmen. Regional shipping sources said the two supply vessels were probably sailing to Bahrain, the United States Navy’s main supply point in the Gulf. No Gulf Arab State has granted shore-base facilities to the large United States naval force in the Gulf.