Asia-Pacific

Qaeda linked group claims attack on Japan tanker

(Agencies)
Updated: 2010-08-04 14:57

DUBAI - A group linked to al Qaeda claimed on Wednesday that a suicide bomber from its organisation was responsible for an attack on a Japanese supertanker last week in the Strait of Hormuz.

"Last Wednesday, after midnight, the martyrdom-seeking hero Ayyub al-Taishan ... blew himself up in the Japanese tanker M.Star in the Strait of Hormuz between the United Arab Emirates and Oman," the Brigades of Abdullah Azzam group said in a statement posted on an Islamist website used by militants.

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The statement said the attack was a blow to the global economy and the oil market.

Forty percent of the world's seaborne oil passes through the narrow Strait, gateway to the oil-producing Gulf. Al Qaeda has threatened to attack shipping there in the past.

No independent verification of the statement was immediately available.

No immediate comment was available from the ship's owner, Japan's Mitsui O.S.K. Ltd. The company hired a Dubai-based specialist last week to investigate what damaged the M.Star, which is 333 metres in length.

The group's statement said those who had offered other explanations on the possible causes of the tanker incident, ranging from a freak wave to an internal explosion, were trying to cover up what had occurred.

In 2005, a group using the name Abdullah Azzam Brigades said it carried out deadly bombings at the Egyptian resort of Sharm al-Sheikh.

The group also claimed responsibility in 2005 for firing rockets at two US warships in Jordan's Aqaba port. The rockets missed their targets.