After a night of speculation, the Egyptian Cabinet said on Thursday morning that the fire that broke out aboard two energy vessels at Damietta Port the day before was caused by a drone strike, though it did not disclose who launched the drone.
A worker at the port who witnessed the incident says they heard a massive explosion at 2:10 pm on Wednesday. The blast occurred at berth 27, at the far end of the port near an area known as the silos zone, close to the facilities of SEGAS , the company that operates the Damietta liquefaction plant.
Police immediately sealed off the site and established a security cordon, the witness tells Mada Masr. “No extra security measures happened , and nobody had their phones taken. They cordoned off the berth. Ambulances arrived, but none left carrying casualties. They just closed off the area and we carried on with our workday as normal,” they say.
Two parliamentary sources speaking to Mada Masr confirm that the incident occurred at around 2:30 pm. Vessel traffic at the port was subsequently suspended until the affected ship had been towed out of the port basin. After 6 pm, navigation resumed, the sources say, which was confirmed by the Damietta Port Authority in a statement on Thursday.
The vessel targeted was the Energos Winter , a floating liquified natural gas regasification unit owned by the American New Fortress Energy. Last summer, the Egyptian Natural Gas Holding Company signed a five-year agreement with the company for hiring the vessel.
A second vessel nearby was also seen aflame.
A source at the Petroleum Ministry says the Energos Winter had been operating at full capacity, supplying between 400 million and 500 million cubic feet of natural gas per day to the national grid — around six percent of Egypt’s peak summer demand of 7.5 billion cubic feet daily. It was one of four regasification vessels on which the country currently relies.
The vessel has now been taken out of service and is not expected to return anytime soon, the source says. It will leave Egypt for maintenance and repairs for the damage sustained in the strike.
As an interim measure, the source says Egypt will rely on the Energos Force , a regasification vessel stationed at Aqaba. Under an agreement reached with Jordan in late 2024 , Egypt can draw on part of the vessel’s operating capacity in emergencies, i n addition to increasing the use of Mazut to meet any energy interruption .
Thursday’s government statement confirmed what has been already circulated by international media outlets the day of the strike: that the fire was caused by a drone strike. The first official statement, issued on Wednesday by the Petroleum Ministry, had referred only to the fire, without mentioning its cause or denying the international press reports.
From the outset, Egyptian state institutions were intent on carefully controlling media coverage of the incident. Egyptian newspapers took down a report quoting TV host and MP Mostafa Bakry, who had cited what he described as “security sources” denying that the fire had resulted from a drone attack. The report was removed within minutes of publication.
That approach was clearly reflected in the following day’s press coverage, with most outlets making no mention of the incident. The few that did cover it merely carried the Petroleum Ministry’s statement briefly and on an inside page.
But as maritime security firms, including Ambrey and Vanguard, publicly said that a drone strike had caused the fire, the government decided to reveal that detail itself, while stressing that “no party has claimed responsibility for the incident.”
A senior Cabinet source says that the Petroleum Ministry’s Wednesday statement was issued at the direct instruction of the presidency, with orders for its immediate release before anyone else could comment. The government later received instructions to disclose that a drone had been involved, which it did in Thursday morning’s statement, the source adds.
One of the parliamentary sources says Thursday’s statement most likely came after authorities realized the matter can no longer be concealed. “The international press is talking. There are satellites. It can’t stay hidden,” they say.
According to the second parliamentary source, US President Donald Trump’s remarks on Wednesday that he had been briefed on the incident left the government no choice but to reveal and explain what had happened.
Nasr Salem, the former head of the Armed Forces Reconnaissance Department and professor of strategic studies, tells Mada Masr that the Cabinet’s delay in announcing the incident was consistent with standard security procedures, which require the details to be verified before any public statement is issued, particularly given the sensitivity of determining the source of the attack.
According to Salem, the first steps after such an incident involve establishing the cause of the attack and identifying where the drone was launched from, before reviewing the air defense system to determine if the strike exploited a radar gap in the area. If such a gap is found, the necessary corrective measures are taken. If not, the level of readiness is raised.
“But the mere fact that the attack occurred doesn’t necessarily indicate a flaw in the defense system,” he says. “Very small and isolated breaches can happen.”
The protocol followed in such cases, Salem says, is not limited to gathering information. It may also involve diplomatic contacts with the suspected state to determine whether the incident was accidental or politically motivated. Sometimes, such understandings ultimately result in the responsible state never being publicly disclosed, he adds.
Salem explains that drones’ small radar signature makes them difficult to detect and that they can also be launched from virtually anywhere, including from a vessel in the Mediterranean. Some small commercial drones can be modified to carry an explosive that detonates on impact, making them capable of targeting a regasification vessel, which is highly flammable.
But for Salem, “all possibilities remain on the table.” Before making any announcement, he stresses, “the information has to be verified because it could implicate other countries. Otherwise, you risk sparking a crisis, or even a war, between two states.”
This is why, Salem says, “sometimes silence is the better option.”
A former senior government official agrees that the government’s public confirmation of a military strike came relatively late but that the delay was consistent with the need to establish and clarify every aspect of the incident in order to issue an accurate statement.
No state should be ruled out, the former official tells Mada Masr. Suspicions should not be confined to Iran or its proxies, particularly given that so far, there is no conclusive evidence that Tehran was behind the attack. They also point to Egypt’s recent diplomatic mediation efforts, which have included contacts with Iran.
Despite the caution around attributing blame for the attack, it was inevitable that fingers would point toward Iran and its regional allies. As the United States continues to strike Iranian targets, many leapt to conclude that Wednesday afternoon’s attack was an indication from Iran that it had no issue with expanding the scope of its attacks beyond the Strait of Hormuz and even the Red Sea.
Drone attacks have also increasingly become a standard feature of the arsenal of Iran and its allies, who have increasingly used the relatively cheap, precise and effective technology to target energy and industrial sites in the Gulf as well as US military sites in those countries without detection, as drones have a comparatively easy time evading detection and defense.
As for the intended target of the attack, Kate Dourian, non-resident fellow at the Washington-based Arab Gulf States Institute and researcher at the Energy Institute in the UK, says it is unclear whether the target of the attack was Egypt or the US-owned regasification vessel.
“Egypt gets around 90 percent of its liquid natural gas imports from the US at present,” she tells Mada Masr, which means the interests of both countries are affected by the attack.
In addition to the growing US role in supplying Egypt, energy sector activity in and around the country has accelerated in recent months, with a set of recent investment decisions to develop natural gas infrastructure in the Eastern Mediterranean, rendering Egypt a “bright spot” in the market, Dourian says.
Those investment decisions include Tuesday’s greenlight for a link-up between Cyprus’s offshore gas field and Egypt’s gas processing and liquefaction facilities, including a station that lies just a few kilometers from Damietta Port.
At the same time, Dourian notes that Saudi Arabia has leaned on Egypt to resume its own crude exports via the Sidi Krir port from the Red Sea coastline during the closure of its normal export routes via Hormuz.
“We must bear in mind the fact Iran has said: ‘if we can’t export, no one else can,’” says the researcher.
But there is an equally strong argument that it is not in Iran’s interests to have conducted the attack, according to Iranian political analyst and cultural advisor to the Iranian Embassy in Egypt Abdel Reda bin Ali.
Ali tells Mada Masr that Iran has made substantial efforts over the past two years to develop relations with Egypt, with bilateral ties now warmer and friendlier than they have ever been — a development Tehran is unlikely to jeopardize by carrying out such an attack.
The rapprochement that Ali indicates was apparent during the first weeks of the war, which began in February. Egypt was quick to join Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and Turkey in establishing a diplomatic corps that sought to end the war, relying on Egypt’s intelligence to open a line of communication with the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, according to informed sources who spoke to Mada Masr in April.
An Egyptian source told Mada Masr at the time that the General Intelligence Service used the existing relationship it had built with the IGRC to try and push forward the negotiation track.
It is this rapprochement that makes Bin Ali rule out Iranian involvement in the attack. “Iran has time and again announced that it targets facilities tied to the US and the Zionist entity. It even announced its targeting of military bases in Arab countries and the Persian Gulf, because those bases are used by the US against Iran. That’s why we target them,” he said, describing such sites as “legitimate” targets and Iranian strikes as a form of deterrence. But Iran has no interest in targeting Egypt, he says.
But that is not enough reason to rule out Iranian involvement in the attack, according to a former Egyptian diplomat who maintains regular contact with Gulf and Western capitals. Iran has demonstrated duplicity in its dealings with different actors during this war, the former diplomat says, attributing this to a divide between the country’s political and military establishments.
“Anyone who says Iran does not carry out attacks against countries with which it maintains good relations has to explain the strikes it launched less than 24 hours after the Iranian foreign minister’s [visit] to the Omani capital,” they say.
These various possibilities are prompting official Egyptian circles to exercise caution before pointing fingers.
A senior Egyptian official tells Mada Masr that Cairo’s top military and security officials are still analyzing the Damietta Port attack, despite preliminary assessments that appear to rule out Iranian involvement, particularly given that Egypt is not implicated in the current war.
“The region’s complex security environment, along with the spread of armed groups and their possession of advanced military technologies, creates many possible scenarios for the attack,” the senior official says. Cairo, they add, is keen not to rush into taking or announcing a position given the complexity of recent regional dynamics, including renewed tensions in Yemen, the Horn of Africa and the Gulf.
Egypt’s caution stems from its desire to avoid becoming entangled in regional tensions at such a sensitive moment. As the official says, “the current situation cannot withstand any more complications.”
The post The Damietta drone: A night of caution and speculation first appeared on Mada Masr .
The Damietta drone: A night of caution and speculation
Aggregated summary from an independent source. Read the original at MadaMasr.