A US vessel fired warning shots at more than a dozen Iranian fast attack boats which buzzed close to a US Navy submarine and escort ships in the narrow Strait of Hormuz on Monday, the Pentagon reportedly said.
The Defense Post reports that in the second such incident in two weeks, 13 Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Navy boats approached the seven US vessels at high speeds, closing within 150 yards (140 meters) before one of the US vessels fired 30 shots in two volleys, until they moved away, said Pentagon spokesman John Kirby.
The report as no fewer than 12 people, including a senior army officer, were killed and several others wounded in a roadside ambush in central Burundi, administrative and medical sources said on Monday.
Police said late Sunday that eight people were killed when bandits set upon four vehicles near Muramvya, a provincial capital about 50 kilometers (31 miles) northeast of the main city of Bujumbura.
But residents and official government and hospital sources told AFP the real toll was higher, and that a child was among the dead.
“Ten people were killed on the spot and two others, including a little girl, succumbed to their injuries,” an administrative source told AFP on condition of anonymity.
A medical official, also requesting anonymity, said “there were 11 bodies in the Muramvya morgue” while a twelfth victim was in Bujumbura after being transferred to a hospital there.
President Evariste Ndayishimiye said those responsible must be brought to justice. “We are saddened to see Burundi once again lose its children to bandits,” he said on Twitter.
A Burundian army officer, Colonel Onesphore Nizigiyimana, and one of his daughters were among the victims, according to the administrative source, and relatives of the victim.
The colonel was returning from a family celebration with his wife and three daughters when a dozen heavily-armed men attacked their vehicle, setting it ablaze, the source said. “The colonel and one of his daughters were burned to death in their car.”
Three other vehicles that came across the scene, including a bus, were also fired upon by bandits using guns and grenades.
“People are in shock, because it was a real military operation,” one Muramvya resident told AFP, saying the group vanished into a nearby forest after taking what they could.
Seven people were killed in April in Rusaka, a town in the neighboring province of Mwaro, in an attack on a bar police also attributed to armed bandits.
At least a dozen people were killed in late 2020 in simiiar armed attacks in Burundi, a small, landlocked nation of some 11 million people.
On the US warning shot, Kirby said, “sadly harassment by the IRGC-N is not a new phenomenon. It’s unsafe, it’s unprofessional. It’s the kind of activity that can lead to somebody getting hurt, and can lead to a real miscalculation there in the region. That doesn’t serve anybody’s interests.”
Asked if the US vessels are allowed to fire directly on the Iranian boats and sink them, Kirby declined to describe their rules of engagement. However, he added, “They have the right of self defense and they know how to use that.”
Kirby pointed out that the Iranian actions took place in the Strait of Hormuz, where ships have little room to move.
“It’s an international waterway and of course when you’re in the strait, there are certain limits to your ability to maneuver,” he said. “It is a choke point in the region. So it’s not insignificant that this kind of dangerous, unsafe and unprofessional behavior occurred there.”
In late April three Iranian fast inshore attack craft provoked warning shots when they came within 68 yards of two US vessels in international waters in the northern part of the Gulf, according to the US Navy.
And in early April four Revolutionary Guard vessels, three fast attack craft, and a large Harth 55 catamaran similarly came close to two US Coast Guard patrol ships, crossing their bows while ignoring warnings.
No shots were fired in that encounter.
