Oman navy takes 16 crew off the Saudi tanker Sidr a week after the Hormuz hit

Oman's Maritime Security Centre said on 7 September that a Royal Navy of Oman ship had completed support and assistance to the Saudi-flagged tanker Sidr and had evacuated 16 of her 25 crew. The statement, posted on X, said the evacuees received medical care. It confirmed that two seamen on the ship had been killed.

Sidr was hit on 31 August while using the southern corridor of the Strait of Hormuz, the lane the United States has tried to keep open for Gulf traffic. She was one of two Saudi oil supertankers reported struck that day. Bahri, the state shipping company that owns the vessel, said on 3 September that two Filipino seafarers had died. Riyadh named Iran as the source of the attack and called for lower tension and respect for navigation.

Monday's Omani note does not say where the 16 were taken. It does not name the seven people who were neither among the dead nor among the evacuees. Reuters recorded that gap the same day. The centre's language covers logistical support to the whole complement of 25 and an evacuation of 16. That leaves room for crew who stayed aboard a damaged hull, crew who left by another route, or crew whose status is still being checked.

The timing is a week after the strike. Sidr was not a fresh casualty on 7 September. She was a ship that had already been hit, already lost two men, and had sat in or near Omani waters long enough for a navy vessel to come alongside. Oman has spent the war as a channel between Washington and Tehran. Pulling sailors off a Saudi tanker is consistent with that role: keep the crew alive, keep the strait from adding another abandoned hull, avoid joining either blockade.

The wider traffic picture is already thin. Commercial counts after the latest round of tanker strikes have put commodity traffic through Hormuz near 10 ships a day on a 10-day average, the lowest since May. Oil volumes through the strait have been running about 60 percent below pre-war levels. Sidr is one more hull that will not complete a normal Gulf-to-Asia run on schedule.

Abu Dhabi used the same Monday to say it is building alternative routes so that its energy exports are not held by the war. Anwar Gargash, the UAE presidential adviser, put that point in public on 7 September. Oman cannot build a pipeline around Hormuz. It can lift people off a ship that was using the corridor Oman still polices.

Two numbers now sit on the same incident file: 2 dead, 16 evacuated. The missing 7 are the next fact the Maritime Security Centre has not supplied. Until it does, the Sidr case is a completed rescue of part of a crew and an unfinished account of the rest.

Iran has not issued a matching statement on this evacuation. The United States has not said whether Sidr was under any escort when she was hit. Bahri has not said whether the tanker will be towed, sold for scrap, or repaired. Those are the three commercial endings available to a loaded crude carrier that has already lost two of her crew.