united states government that the islamic republic of iran is responsible for the attacks that occurred in the gulf of oman today. this assessment is based on intelligence, the weapons used, the level of expertise needed to execute the operation. reporter: going a step further to accuse government leaders but offering no public evidence. no proxy group operating in the area has the resources and proficiency to act with such a high degree of sophistication. reporter: the u.s. further challenging iran at the u.n. it s unacceptable are go party to attack commercial shipping. and today s attacks on ships in the gulf of oman raise very serious concerns. reporter: at 6:12 and 7:00 a.m. local time, the u.s. navy picked up two early distress calls and immediately sent the nearby destroyer uss bainbridge to the scene. it took on 21 merchant mariners from one stricken ship. the crew from the second damaged tanker picked up by a commercial
this explosion. according to one ship manager of the at least one of the ships was hit either by a shell or even potentially a torpedo. there were about 40 crew members, all of them appear to be safely, they evacuated ship. all appear to be safely recovered and now there are multiple investigations under way as to what caused these explosions. this is being treated as it was a deliberate attack on two ships in fairly close timing and proximity. happened around 6:00 in the morning the first one and the other around 6:45. so just about 45 minutes later. this the uss bainbridge, part of the fifth fleet based in bahrain was in the area and responded. said it received two distress calls and responded to provide assistance. now the question, who was behind this? the u.s. officials have said in
is providing is the u.s.s. bainbridge. it arrived on scene not too long after the distress call. some of the sailors from one of the khan kearse are on board the u.s.s. bainbridge. we don t have good numbers of how many people are on, how many may be injured. we re constituent waiting to hear that. as you said in the production, this comes days after the united states and iran have been in this war of words, back and forth. it started in early may when john bolton, the national security adviser, announced the u.s.s. abraham lincoln and a number of other assets, they announced even more, patriot battery, an air defense system, a number of jets and other assets to the region. this is all in response to what the u.s. maintains is a credible thread of threats from iran.
ship. more than 40 crew members had to abandon their vessels and 21, according to the u.s. military were recovered by the uss bainbridge. this was a different kind of incident so whoever it was the suspicions here in the region that it was iran. iran saying it was somebody else trying to pin it on iran. they proved two capabilities. the capability to attack a ship while it s in port, and this time to attack ships more or less simultaneously while they are in transit. i know you don t want to speculate who you believe is responsible for this attack, but you have mentioned to our producers that you understand why people would be pointing the finger at iran right now. talk to me about why? some of it is the activity that s happened over the last two months. in late april, iran said if the u.s. sanctions would continue on the rise, and if they would lose
there s a 7-eleven outside the base and i stopped to get some items i would want to jump with, tobacco, money, stuff like that. i stopped and there was a guy in front of me who was in no hurry whatsoever. i was in a hurry. i had a set amount of time to be there. one of the things he was buying was a usa today. and he slammed down the paper all patriotic. i m sure someone would do something about this. if you would hurry up and pay for your stuff, we will. by that time the lifeboat had run out of fuel and the pirates agreed to have it towed behind the uss bainbridge but they kept captain phillips at gunpoint demanding safe passage to somalia where they could hold him for ransom. we thought we thought of everything how to rescue people. but nobody thought of a fully encompassed lifeboat being towed by a navy cruiser. how long of a time did you have to get to base? we had a full head count in