MANAMA, Bahrain -- A mine blasted a hole in an American-owned oil tanker outside the Persian Gulf Monday as a suspected minefield in the northern gulf held up U.S.-escorted tankers and Iraqi bombers raided six Iranian oil installations.
The mine explosion, the first outside the gulf in the nearly 7-year-old Iran-Iraq war, widened the danger zone for U.S. military forces involved in the troubled region, while the Iraqi raids were likely to set back U.N. efforts to obtain a durable cease-fire in the Iran-Iraq conflict.
Iran last month vowed to strike Kuwaiti oil installations if Iraq continued to bomb its oil and other industrial sites.
The mine ripped a 4-yard-wide hole 3 feet below the water line in the No. 3 port tank of the 125,857-ton supertanker Texaco Caribbean, loaded with 200,000 tons of Iranian crude oil, which began leaking.
'We've been hit,' tanker Capt. Luigi Parchi radioedin a distress signal. 'There is widespread pollution. We are trying to stop it.'
The incident took place about 8 miles off the United Arab Emirates port of Fujairah at 2:42 p.m., Lloyds of London insurers said, and about 80 miles south of the Strait of Hormuz in the Gulf of Oman. The ship was said to be anchored off the port Monday evening.
The Caribbean, bound for Rotterdam, Netherlands, with a crew of Italians, had just taken on crude oil at the makeshift floating oil terminal of Larak Islandestablished by Iran in the Strait of Hormuz.
The Texaco-owned Caribbean, sailing under a Panamanian flag, was under charter to a Norwegian trading company called Seateam, an oil company statement said Monday.
Shipping sources speculated the mine drifted south after being released by Iranian commandos near Khor Fakkhan, the port from which theee Kuwaiti tankers and U.S. warships left in a convoy on Saturday for Kuwait.
The three re-flagged Kuwaiti tankers and at least three U.S. warships providing escort in the Persian Gulf were delayed in their journey after at least one mine was detected in the shipping lanes to Kuwait, shipping sources said.
The sources said the convoy Sunday evening passed without incident west of Farsi Island, close to the area where the supertanker Bridgeton, also escorted by the Navy, hit a mine July 24.
The 81,000 ton Sea Isle City, the 80,000-ton Ocean City and the 47,000-ton liquid petroleum carrier Gas King -- all recently re-flagged with the stars and stripes -- slipped past Farsi Island in channels to the west too shallow for the deep-drafted Bridgeton.
Guarding the convoy Monday were the frigate USS Crommelin, the destroyer USS Kidd, and the frigate USS Jarret, all armed with missiles.
The American convoy, en route to the Kuwaiti oil terminal Al Ahmadi, did not leave its overnight anchorage at Saudi Arabia's main oil terminal at Ras Tannurah after a mine was spotted at the Khafji offshore oil field midway between Kuwait and a point 18 miles north of Farsi Island where the Bridgeton was hit by a mine.
The convoy slipped out of the Gulf of Oman Saturday after U.S. officials radioed misleading messages saying it would not leave until minesweeping Sea Stallion helicopters arrived later this week from the Indian Ocean aboard the carrier USS Guadacanal.
In the Iraqi raids Monday, warplanes bombed a refinery at Tabriz, about 340 miles northwest of Tehran, and five oilfields across Iran in six simultaneous raids, the Iraqi news agency INA said.
Tehran Radio said nine civilians died and several others were wounded when Iraqi aircraft struck at 'industrial units' near Tabriz and at Gachsaran in southwestern Iran.
Iraq said it ended a 25-day lull in its air raids on Iranian installations because Tehran rejected a U.N. Security Council resolution passed last month calling for an immediate cease-fire, a spokesman in Baghdad said.
Meanwhile, Iran kept up its war of words.
Tehran Radio, commenting Monday on the so-called 'Martyrdom' maneuvers it conducted in the gulf last week, warned that the waterway will be transformed into a 'killing field' for its enemies.
On Sunday, Prime Minister Hussein Musavi said the gulf 'will remain full of mines' as long as the superpowers are present there.
