{"id":651,"date":"2026-09-11T03:47:21","date_gmt":"2026-09-11T03:47:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/regulasshipping.com\/blog\/four-projectiles-hit-two-vessels-off-khasab-as-hormuz-gateway-comes-under-fire\/"},"modified":"2026-09-11T03:47:21","modified_gmt":"2026-09-11T03:47:21","slug":"four-projectiles-hit-two-vessels-off-khasab-as-hormuz-gateway-comes-under-fire","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/regulasshipping.com\/blog\/four-projectiles-hit-two-vessels-off-khasab-as-hormuz-gateway-comes-under-fire\/","title":{"rendered":"Four Projectiles Hit Two Vessels Off Khasab as Hormuz Gateway Comes Under Fire"},"content":{"rendered":"

The United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations centre issued Warning 133-26 at 1910 UTC on Thursday, 10 September 2026, after the master of a third merchant ship reported four unknown projectiles striking two unidentified vessels about 4 nautical miles west of Khasab, Oman. The reporting ship was about 6 nautical miles south of the contacts. One hull caught fire. The status of the second vessel was unknown. UKMTO named neither ship nor flag, gave no casualty or pollution figure, and did not attribute the projectiles to Iran, the United States or any other party. Authorities are investigating. Traffic in the area was told to transit with caution and to report suspicious activity.<\/p>\n

Khasab sits on Oman\u2019s Musandam Peninsula, immediately south of the Strait of Hormuz at its narrowest point. That is the southern gateway, not a quiet coastal roadstead. UKMTO has already logged a string of projectile and explosion reports around the same port since late August, including a tanker struck by three projectiles 17 nautical miles east of Khasab on 31 August while completing an outbound transit. Warning 133-26 lands on top of Advisory 129-26, which said several merchant vessels in the northern Gulf and the Gulf of Oman had been subjected to \u201cdisabling fire,\u201d and Warning 130-26 on the Gibraltar-flagged products tanker Hercules Star off Port Rashid, where Peninsula confirmed one seafarer killed and one missing.<\/p>\n

The Khasab report closed a week in which both sides of the Iran war put tankers in the targeting picture. On 9 September the U.S. military said it had destroyed five Iranian oil tankers in the Gulf of Oman and near Kharg Island after accusing Iran\u2019s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps of two ballistic-missile attempts against a U.S. Navy warship. Washington has described a tanker-for-tanker response: U.S. Central Command said it had hit ten Iranian tankers over the past week, against twelve over the previous four months. Iran\u2019s Revolutionary Guards said they had fired on two U.S. vessels and eight oil tankers attempting to cross a prohibited area of the strait, and claimed damage to ten other \u201cnon-compliant\u201d ships. The United States denied that its warships were hit. About an hour before Warning 133-26 circulated, Iranian media said the IRGC had targeted a Saildrone Explorer unmanned surface vessel in the strait. The U.S. military gave no immediate confirmation.<\/p>\n

The traffic picture matches the warning. Preliminary Kpler data put Hormuz commodity transits at nine on Wednesday, 10 September\u2019s lowest reading for the month, down from 12 on Tuesday and 20 on Monday, with six of the nine exiting the Gulf. Thursday\u2019s count fell further, to two tracked crossings. Most ships that did move went dark. Two VLCCs, each with about two million barrels, were among Wednesday\u2019s exits; destinations were not published. Kpler counted 514 commercial vessels stuck in the Arabian Gulf as of Thursday. The International Maritime Organization\u2019s incident list, updated on 8 September, records 73 confirmed vessel attacks since the conflict opened in late February, with 21 seafarer deaths. Brent traded above $103 a barrel on Thursday after closing back over $100 earlier in the week. Acled\u2019s Valentin d\u2019Hauthuille noted that U.S. forces had struck more tankers in the Gulf and the strait over the past week than in the previous four months combined.<\/p>\n

The operational implication is that the Oman-hugging southern highway is no longer a lower-threat alternative to the Iranian side of the lane. Khasab is the waypoint operators have used for the Omani corridor, for waiting hulls in the shuttle pattern that Vitol and others have described as still moving roughly 10 million barrels a day, and for ships that go dark on the last miles of an outbound transit. Four projectiles on two hulls, seen from a third ship 6 nautical miles away, means a master in that box may be a witness, a target, or both, with no time to wait for attribution. Company security officers who still treat Musandam coastal waters as the \u201csafer\u201d side of Hormuz need a written threat assessment for that specific approach, not a copy of last month\u2019s strait note. Passage plans should assume UKMTO warnings can arrive while the ship is completing an outbound, holding for a shuttle partner, or steaming dark. Damage-control, citadel and firefighting drills belong on the pre-arrival checklist for Khasab, Fujairah holding grounds and the Gulf of Oman as much as they do for a Hormuz traffic-separation scheme.<\/p>\n

Reporting and welfare have to sit in the SMS before the next projectile, not after the first unnamed hull is on fire. Masters should report to UKMTO while the event is happening, register with MSCIO under BMP Maritime Security, and file with IFC-IOR when operating in the Gulf, Gulf of Oman or Arabian Sea. A third-party visual report of four projectiles is enough to start the clock: flag, P&I, war-risk underwriters, and a named company officer who owns next-of-kin if casualties follow. Insurers will ask whether the ship was in a declared high-risk area, whether AIS and lookouts matched the Ship Security Plan, and whether the company had treated the Omani approaches as excluded. Silence in the voyage order on remaining west of Khasab, waiting as a shuttle hull, or proceeding dark through the southern highway will land on the owner. UKMTO\u2019s own language is the line to put in the bridge pack: transit with caution, report suspicious activity, and do not wait for vessel names that may never be published.<\/p>\n

What Operators Should Note<\/h2>\n