“Some also raise the possibility that it was an accidental explosion of some munitions the ship carries.”
I know that when dealing with an incident like this, you can’t do the knee jerk reaction thing. Got to attempt to get confirmation again.
However, given the location of this “incident”, an accident would be just a little too coincidental
Desperate Gov'ts do desperate things.
Yes, there are still a couple of other possibilities...
1) Ships don’t routinely spontaneously blow up the way they did from 1880-1945 (Cordite cooking off and what not) but there’s still a lot of explosives and flammable material on board; Jane’s states this class of vessel carries 12 Depth Charges, and these would be stored at the stern.
2) A mine is still a possibility, despite the stern explosion. Mines don’t have to be contact; in addition to magnetic, there are pressure and acoustic-triggered mines, which might not have gone off till most of the ship had passed over.