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French Oil Tanker Explodes in Suspected Terrorist Attack
A French tanker carrying nearly 400,000 barrels of crude oil exploded early Sunday off Yemen, and owners of the ship said it was a terrorist attack. All but one of the crew of 25 was rescued. French officials declined to release further details pending an investigation of Yemeni authorities. But the explosion brought to mind the attack on the USS Cole in Yemen two years ago. It also came one year after the beginning of the U.S.-led war in Afghanistan on the al-Qaeda terror network.

A cloud of smoke billows from French supertanker Linbourg on Sunday. Al-Ayyam/AFP

The tanker's crew believed the blaze was caused by terrorists detonating explosives from a small fishing boat that crept alongside it, said Peter Raes, the shipping company's managing director.

Asked whether the explosion was a terrorist act, Raes said in an interview late Sunday: "I would be very surprised if it was anything else. It would be very unlikely if it was an accident, an inside explosion." Raes heads Franship S.A., a French oil-tanker company based in Nantes, France, and Antwerp, Belgium.

Speaking by telephone from Antwerp, Raes said the tanker's captain, Hubert Ardillon, had told him on the telephone that his crew had seen a small fishing vessel approach so close that they thought the two vessels were about to collide. "Then the captain heard the explosion," Raes said.

Raes said the vessel is less than two years old. "It was in totally calm waters and practically stopped, so a source of ignition is virtually out of the question."

The tanker was loaded with heavy oil from Saudi Arabia and was headed to East Asia, Raes said. About 8 miles off the coast, the Limburg was waiting for a mooring vessel to guide it into port.

Yemen is the ancestral home of Osama bin Laden and is believed to harbor al-Qaeda operatives in its rugged mountains. In October 2000, suicide bombers in a fishing vessel attacked the USS Cole in the Yemeni port of Aden, killing 17 American servicemen. The Cole attack's second-year anniversary is this Friday. Those arrested in the attack by Yemeni authorities are due in court next week.

U.S. officials said they were monitoring the incident Sunday but declined to comment.

French officials issued contradictory statements Sunday. Hours after the explosion, a French diplomat in Yemen told French TV that a small vessel snuck up to the tanker. Shortly after, government officials in Paris said they didn't yet have enough information to reach a conclusion.

France has been a reluctant ally in President Bush's efforts to assemble a coalition to disarm Iraqi president Saddam Hussein.

Raes said the company considered the waters off Yemen "about the safest in the gulf area, with all the U.S. military in that neighborhood."

The blue sky above the stricken tanker turned black with smoke. Plumes reached several hundred yards high. One Bulgarian seaman among the crew of 25 men was still missing by late Sunday. The rest, eight Frenchmen and 16 Eastern Europeans, were rescued from the water.

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