Free Republic

WASHINGTON - The blast that punched a hole in a French supertanker off the coast of Yemen on Sunday appears to have occurred within the ship, a senior US State Department official has been quoted as saying. The vessel, carrying 397,000 barrels of crude oil, was set afire by the blast in the Gulf of Aden. 'Indications were that it was an explosion from inside the vessel,' said Mr Richard Boucher, according to CNN. He added that a 'variety' of sources, including French and Yemeni investigators, had drawn that conclusion from the way the vessel looked after the explosion. However,...

— MUKALLA, Yemen (Reuters) - A French inspector said after examining the tanker holed and gutted by an explosion off Yemen said on Thursday debris from what could be an attacking boat had been found on the ship. "We found debris of a boat which obviously does not belong to the tanker," Jean-Francois Perrouty told Reuters, noting the debris was made of fiberglass. He said the French foreign ministry will be issuing a communique about the result of the first day of the investigations on Friday morning into what happened to the French-flagged tanker Limburg on Sunday. Asked if the...

Terrorism experts fear that the world's oil tankers, sea lanes and major ports are dangerously vulnerable to 9/11-scale attacks that would cripple world trade. They cite an alarming combination of factors, including terrorist-connected Southeast Asian rebels involved in piracy, the difficulty of tracking suspect vessels in the murky world of commercial shipping, and an Al Qaeda fleet that could be as large as 300 vessels. Plots that have already been carried out include the October 2000 attack on the U.S. destroyer Cole in the port of Aden in Yemen, which killed 17 sailors, and the attack last October on the...