DUBAI, United Arab Emirates -- A mine in the Gulf of Oman sank a supply ship Saturday, killing one sailor and leaving five missing, and a fiery explosion ripped through a petroleum plant in an area of Saudi Arabia seen as vulnerable to Iranian subversion.
Four people were injured in the blast and fire at an Arabian American Oil Co. liquefied gas plant at Al Jubayl, in eastern Saudi Arabia 45 miles northwest of Bahrain, the state-run Saudi Press Agency said.
The agency said the devastation was accidental, triggered by an electrical fault. Industry sources said the fire was very large and was brought under control after several hours.
A State Department spokesman in Washington said Saturday that some Americans worked at the plant but none was hurt in the explosion.
Gulf analysts believe the eastern Saudi province, which has a large Shiite Moslem population, is vulnerable to Iranian-backed subversion. But political sources in Saudi Arabia said there was no evidence the industrial explosion was caused by sabotage.
Iran has vowed to avenge the deaths of Iranian pilgrims killed during protests July 31 in the holy city of Mecca, in Saudi Arabia.
The sinking of the 156-foot, 245-ton shipping supply vessel Anita was the worst maritime disaster so far in hostilities in the gulf region, and the first time casualties have occurred outside the gulf since the beginning of the nearly 7-year-old Iran-Iraq war.
'We have not lost hope,' said a spokesman at the Dubai-based Gulf Agency, which owns the ship. Television crews that flew over the scene of the attack spotted wreckage including an empty lifeboat, debris, oranges and two mines.
United Arab Emirates coast guard cutters and helicopters raced to the scene and plucked six people out of the sea in strong winds. One, an Indian crewman, died in a hospital and two survivors were hospitalized, the Gulf Agency said.
Four crewmen and one of four Korean seamen being ferried to a ship off the port of Fujairah were missing. The Gulf Agency said the missing included the ship's British captain, Gerry Blackburn, 36, of Humberside, England.
Meanwhile, Iran said Saturday its minesweepers began operations Friday in international waters of the Gulf of Oman and the Strait of Hormuz and had found 'nothing suspicious,' the state-run Islamic Republic News Agency reported. Two warships are escorting the minesweepers that are being aided by helicopters, it said.
The mine explosion that sank the Anita was the second such incident in the Gulf of Oman in less than a week. The American-operated tanker Texaco Caribbean hit a mine in the same area on Monday while fully loaded with Iranian crude oil, but sustained no casualties.
Port authorities at Fujairah reimposed a 50-square-mile exclusion zone just north of Fujairah because of the danger of mines, which shippers believe were laid down by Iran.
The Emirates had introduced the exclusion zone briefly on Thursday, but lifted it in hours after deciding the area was safe. On Friday the UAE turned down an Iranian offer to sweep its waters.
The Gulf of Oman formerly was considered a safe area where ships could refuel, unload and change crews. The incidents have seriously worried authorities in the UAE, whose president, Sheikh Zayed, met with Syrian President Hafez Assad in Damascus Saturday in hope of easing gulf tensions. Syria is Iran's only significant Arab ally.
One shipping source told United Press International he thought the sinking of the Anita would 'affect trade with the Emirates considerably.'
The source said that although the mines were aimed at U.S. warships in the area the devices are hurting all shipping. 'The mine has no brain. It has no eyes. It is a very indiscriminate weapon,' he said.
Riyadh Radio said a Saudi navy officer was killed and another injured in an incident involving a mine Wednesday. The officer was killed when the mine was detonated too close to a bomb disposal unit on a beach in the 'neutral zone' between Saudi Arabia and Kuwait.
