A drone strike hit a gas import terminal at an Egyptian Mediterranean port on Wednesday, the first time Egypt has been targeted since fighting between the United States and Iran resumed this month. No group claimed responsibility. Yemen's Houthi movement denied involvement.
The strike hit the Energos Winter, a floating storage and regasification unit, and the GasLog Salem, a tanker. No casualties were reported at the site.
Pakistan, which is mediating, said negotiations were continuing. "Negotiations between parties are ongoing, particularly on (the) Strait of Hormuz and to de-escalate," the foreign ministry spokesman, Tahir Andrabi, said. Pakistan is trying to return the parties to technical talks after a truce agreed in April broke down earlier in July.
The fighting has widened rather than narrowed over the past week. The United States carried out a heavy wave of strikes on Iranian targets. Three Revolutionary Guards were killed in Zanjan province, according to SBS News on Friday. Five Iranian missiles were shot down over Jordan, and Saudi Arabian forces joined US strikes on Iran-aligned militias in Iraq on Wednesday.
Egypt had stayed outside the fighting. It imports gas through the terminal that was hit, and its president, Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, has positioned the country as a route for talks rather than a party to them. The attack brings an energy import chain that both sides had treated as off the board into the conflict.
A worker was killed at a Chinese company's building site in northern Kuwait in a separate incident.
The Strait of Hormuz is the point the negotiations turn on. Iran has controlled traffic through it since late July, and Australian pump prices have tracked the strait through the month. Fuel excise relief in Australia ends on Sunday, which will add about 17 cents a litre on top of whatever the shipping route does next.
The April truce is not in force. Pakistan says technical talks have not resumed, no party has claimed the Egyptian strike, and there is no ceasefire in place.
