- MUKALLA, Yemen (Reuters)
- A French inspector said on Thursday debris of what could be an attacking
boat had been found on the supertanker holed and gutted by an explosion
off Yemen.
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- "We found debris of a boat which obviously does
not belong to the tanker," Jean-Francois Perrouty told Reuters after
examining the ship. He said the debris was made of fiberglass.
-
- A French Foreign Ministry statement said the first results
of the probe seemed to show the blast on the French-flagged Limburg on
Sunday was due to an attack.
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- A Yemeni cabinet minister said later on Thursday however
that the debris could have come from one of the ship's own lifeboats which
had been destroyed in the blast.
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- "The inspectors have indeed found fiberglass parts
on board the tanker today, but they might be from a rescue boat that belonged
to the tanker itself," the official Yemeni news agency Saba quoted
Transport Minister Saeed Yafai as saying.
-
- He said the investigators had agreed to send the debris
for laboratory examination.
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- Earlier, as U.S., French and Yemeni anti-terror teams
examined the supertanker for evidence, Yemen said for the first time a
guerrilla attack could have caused the blast on Sunday.
-
- Yemen, trying to shed an image as a haven for Islamic
militants, had maintained an accidental fire caused the tanker blast in
the Gulf of Aden, not an attack similar to the suicide bombing of the U.S.
warship Cole in Yemen's Aden port in 2000.
-
- But Yafai told a news conference in Mukalla earlier on
Thursday it was possible the blast that gouged the ship's hull had been
deliberate.
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- "We are not ruling out anything, but we don't want
to take a hasty decision before the end of the investigation," said
the minister, who heads the Yemeni committee probing the blast.
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- Yafai also said police had arrested an unspecified number
of people as a "pre-emptive measure." He did not elaborate but
security sources said earlier up to 20 people had been detained.
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- Asked if the debris looked similar to that found on the
Cole, attacked by a small boat laden with explosives, the inspector Perrouty
said: "Possibly yes."
-
- A French source familiar with the investigation told
Reuters: "In my personal opinion it is 99 percent a terrorist attack.
Most of the (edges of the) hole were pointing inward and it was at the
(sea) water level. I could have believed that it might have been an accident
if the hole was much below the surface level or much higher." The
Limburg's owners, Euronav SA, quoted crew members as saying the blast occurred
shortly after a small boat was seen speeding toward the tanker as it waited
for a tug to take it to Mina al-Dabah near Mukalla, about 500 miles from
San.
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- LEANING TOWARD ATTACK THEORY
-
- A State Department official said on condition of anonymity
that, like Yemen, the United States was leaning more toward the theory
that an attack might have caused the blast.
-
- "Initially a lot of things pointed to some kind
of an accident. Now there are additional indications saying this really
does look more like something deliberate and may have been, dare I use
the word, terrorism," the official said.
-
- State Department spokesman Richard Boucher, speaking
later at a news briefing, said he would leave it to U.S. and French experts
examining the scene to draw any conclusions.
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- "I don't want to speculate at this point about what
results and conclusions the investigators might reach. I would say that
terrorism had not been ruled out as a possible cause," he said.
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- Reports of a boat approaching the tanker recalled the
attack on the Cole that killed 17 U.S. sailors.
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- Washington blames the attack on Osama bin Laden's al
Qaeda network which is also its chief suspect in last year's September
11 attacks. Last month, the U.S. Navy warned of possible Qaeda attacks
on tankers in the Gulf and the Red Sea, which carry about one third of
global oil trade.
-
- A Yemeni government source said it would take a month
at least for the final probe report to be issued. Yemen and the United
States are still probing the Cole attack. The Arab state, which arrested
over 100 suspected militants after September 11, 2000, took days to declare
the Cole bombing a terror attack.
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- A Lloyds report said photographs of the 26-foot wide
oval-shaped hole with its jagged metal edge facing inwards supported claims
of a deliberate attack.
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- Sunday was the eve of the anniversary of the start of
the U.S. military campaign against al Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan.
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- All but one of the 25-member French and Bulgarian crew
survived the blast on the supertanker, which was carrying 400,000 barrels
of Saudi crude when the explosion occurred.
-
- (Additional reporting by Mohammed Sudam in Sanaa)
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