TEHRAN: The US military shoots down an Iranian drone near a United States Navy aircraft carrier in the Arabian Sea, a spokesperson of the US military’s Central Command (Centcom) said.
The spokesperson, Captain Tim Hawkins, said that the Iranian Shahed-139 drone was flying towards the USS Abraham Lincoln aircraft carrier and was shot down by a F-35 US fighter jet in “self-defence and to protect the aircraft carrier and personnel on board.”
The ship was approximately 500 miles from the Iranian coast when the drone approached it with “unclear intent”.
The incident comes days after the US Central Command (Centcom) warned Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) against “any unsafe and unprofessional behaviour near US forces”.
Washington has deployed a naval strike group to the Middle East led by the USS Abraham Lincoln aircraft carrier, with President Donald Trump threatening to intervene militarily following anti-government protests in Iran that peaked last month.
Meanwhile, maritime sources and a security consultancy said that a group of Iranian gunboats approached a US-flagged tanker in the Strait of Hormuz north of Oman.
Iran’s semi-official Fars news agency cited unnamed Iranian officials as saying later on Tuesday that a vessel had entered Iranian territorial waters without the necessary legal permits, was warned, and left the area “without any special security event taking place.”
The Strait links the Persian Gulf to the Gulf of Oman and the Arabian Sea beyond.
