Washington, The United States launched a third round of strikes against Iran after the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps attacked a Cyprus-flagged container ship in the Strait of Hormuz, the US military said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
US Central Command said its forces began the strikes at 7:15 p.m. Eastern Time (4.45 am Sunday Indian time). It said the operation was ordered by President Donald Trump in his capacity as commander in chief.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The latest military action followed an attack on the M\/V GFS Galaxy, a commercial container ship sailing through the strategic waterway.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cAt 7:15 p.m. ET today, US Central Command forces began launching the third round of strikes this week against Iran after Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps forces blatantly attacked M\/V GFS Galaxy, a Cyprus-flagged container ship transiting the Strait of Hormuz,\u201d CENTCOM said in a statement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The command did not immediately identify the locations struck or provide details about the targets. It also did not say which weapons were being used in the operation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A civilian crew member remained missing after the attack on the vessel, according to CENTCOM.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The ship was left stranded because of a fire and extensive damage to its engine room. The nationality of the missing crew member was not disclosed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cA civilian crew member is missing and the vessel is unable to continue the journey due to an onboard fire and significant engineroom damage,\u201d CENTCOM said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The US military linked the fresh strikes to what it described as Iran\u2019s failure to comply with a Memorandum of Understanding. It said Tehran had been given another chance to demonstrate its adherence to the arrangement after earlier attacks on commercial vessels.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cIran was provided yet another opportunity to demonstrate adherence to the Memorandum of Understanding after being held accountable for earlier attacks on commercial vessels but has again failed,\u201d CENTCOM said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
CENTCOM said the latest operation was intended to weaken Iran\u2019s capacity to threaten civilian sailors and commercial shipping in the Strait of Hormuz.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cIn response, the United States is imposing a heavy cost by continuing to degrade Iran\u2019s ability to attack civilian mariners and commercial ships freely transiting the strait,\u201d it said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThe strikes are being carried out at the direction of the Commander in Chief,\u201d CENTCOM added.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Washington, The United States launched a third round of strikes against Iran after the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps attacked a Cyprus-flagged container ship in the Strait of Hormuz, the US […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3097","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-top-news","has_no_thumb"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsaxis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3097","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsaxis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsaxis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsaxis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsaxis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3097"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/newsaxis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3097\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3098,"href":"https:\/\/newsaxis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3097\/revisions\/3098"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsaxis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3097"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsaxis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3097"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsaxis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3097"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}