RIYADH — The Arab Coalition to restore legitimacy in Yemen said on Wednesday that it had foiled a terrorist attack on an oil tanker off the Yemen's coast, the Saudi Press Agency reported. The tanker was sailing towards the Gulf of Aden when it was targeted on Tuesday by four boats, with one of the unmanned vessels trying to explode it, Coalition Spokesman Col. Turki Al-Maliki said in a statement. "An imminent terrorist attack that was aimed to target an oil tanker in the Arabian Sea, 90 nautical miles Southeast of Yemeni port of Nishtun, was thwarted and foiled. The terrorist attempt was carried out at 2.39 p.m. on Tuesday while the oil tanker headed toward the Aden port," Al-Turki said. He added, the attempt was carried out using four boats with the aim of bombing the oil tanker by using one of the unmanned, remote-controlled exploding boats. The spokesman said the naval threat to the global energy security, sea lanes of communication and international trade has turned into a strategic threat to international security with the widening of terrorist organizations' threats to sea straits from the southern Red Sea, Bab-El-Mandeb Strait and the Gulf of Aden to the Arabian Sea and the Strait of Hormuz. The Coalition's Joint Command Forces will continue to implement all necessary measures and procedures to neutralize and eliminate any naval threats in the Coalition's naval area of operations, Al-Turki said while calling on international partners to consolidate and intensify international efforts to neutralize these threats against international security.
