The Department of Migrant Workers on Sunday said there were no Filipino sailors onboard the oil tanker that was struck by a missile in the Gulf of Aden.

“The oil tanker reportedly attacked in the Gulf of Aden, the Marlin Luanda, has no Filipino crew on board,” DMW Officer-in-Charge Hans Cacdac said in a post on X, formerly Twitter.

According to Cacdac, the Marlin Luanda, a petroleum products tanker vessel, was not on the list of registered ships in the DMW’s record.

The Marlin Luanda was hit by a missile after transiting the Red Sea on Friday.

The Iran-backed militants, the Houthis, claimed responsibility for the attack as a response to the “American-British aggression.”

The operator of the oil tanker, Oceonix Services Ltd., is a UK-registered company. It, however, sails under the flag of the Marshall Islands and is operated on behalf of Trafigura — a multinational trading company.

Trafigura on Saturday said that all crew onboard the oil tanker were safe.

According to the firm, the fire caused by the missile had been put out with the help of French, Indian and United States naval ships that assisted the vessel.

The Houthi militants have been attacking commercial vessels in the Red Sea since November in response to the bombings in Palestine. US forces struck an anti-ship missile in Houthi-held Yemen that they said was ready to fire Saturday.

WITH AFP