The Gulf: Death on the Superstructure

The image was grimly familiar: a fighter flashing across the morning sky over the azure waters of the Persian Gulf and firing an Exocet missile into a neutral ship. After a 22-day lull in the Iran-Iraq tanker war, an Iraqi pilot last week claimed another victim, the 25th of the conflict. World Knight, a 258,437-ton tanker owned by Hong Kong Shipping Magnate Sir Y.K. Pao, was bound for Kharg Island to pick up Iranian crude oil. Two British officers and four Chinese seamen were killed immediately as the Exocet demolished the ship’s aft superstructure. Two more Chinese and one Indian died later. The toll was the worst from a single hit in the seven-month tanker war.

After the initial attack, Iraqi Ambassador to Great Britain Wahbi Abdul-Razza al Qaraghuli was summoned to the Foreign Office and rebuked by British Assistant Under Secretary of State for Middle East Affairs Stephen Egerton. Iraq made no official reply, but Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz asked a gathering at the Foreign Policy Association in New York: “Why do they complain that we have killed their boys? Why did they send their boys in the first place?”