Fifth Fleet Reports Second Rescue of Iranian Mariners

[Casino67]

NYTimes.com:

In the second diplomacy-tinged sea rescue in less than a week, a vessel on patrol with the Navy’s Fifth Fleet near the Persian Gulf saved a group of distressed Iranian mariners on Tuesday, pulling them to safety from a cargo dhow that was foundering with a flooded engine room, the naval central command reported.

Follow @nytimesworld for international breaking news and headlines.In a statement, the command said the Coast Guard patrol boat Monomoy, on assignment with a Fifth Fleet task force in the northern Arabian Gulf, approached the stricken Iranian dhow, the Ya-Hussayn, after the dhow’s crew hailed the Monomoy with flares and flashlights in the predawn darkness.

“The dhow’s master requested assistance from Monomoy indicating the engine room was flooding and deemed not seaworthy,” the statement said. The six Iranian crewmen — two aboard the Ya-Hussayn and four on a life raft tied to its stern — were transferred to the Monomoy, the statement said, and were given “water, blankets and halal meals,” noting that such meals are routinely stowed aboard Coast Guard ships “to provide to Muslim mariners in distress.”

Following the customary protocols, the Monomoy crew informed the Iranian maritime rescue service, and the six rescued crewmen were later transferred via inflatable boats to the Naji 7, an Iranian Coast Guard vessel. The statement quoted the owner of the stricken dhow, Hakim Hamid-Awi, as thanking the Monomoy crew and saying, “Without your help, we were dead.”