At least 11 ships were attacked in and around Hormuz in the week to Friday 6 November, and three sank, according to UKMTO (United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations), the British naval office that takes merchant ships' security reports, Al Jazeera reported1. UKMTO named no attacker. Al Jazeera gave no figure for the crews.
The International Maritime Organization (IMO), the UN shipping agency, keeps its own count and does not use UKMTO's. It recorded 29 attacks from 1 to 22 October and logged the container ship GFS Pride, which a projectile hit in the strait on 13 October, as the war's third merchant sinking. None of the three new wrecks has a name yet, so neither counter has placed them in that sequence. A Western military intelligence agency puts strikes by projectiles on shipping at 88 since early July and says most go unreported2.
Transits that week ran at 325, about 65% below pre-war, on a lane where freight from the Gulf to Asia already cost more than $37 a barrel by mid-October.
Iran's own coast took fire too. Two projectiles hit Qeshm Island on the night of 6 November, the latest in weeks of strikes on its air defences and launchers that Al Jazeera attributes to US forces; Donald Trump called them "minor strikes", and CENTCOM (US Central Command) has not confirmed them. Iran's army said it shot down a US MQ-9 Reaper strike drone on 7 November, and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) claimed an older MQ-1 the day before. CENTCOM confirmed neither claim.
