A suspected drone struck a US-owned floating liquefied natural gas facility moored at Egypt’s Mediterranean port of Damietta on Wednesday, igniting a fire that spread to a nearby LNG carrier and prompting President Donald Trump to threaten fresh retaliation against Iran, in a sharp expansion of the Middle East conflict beyond its original battle lines.
British maritime security firm Ambrey assessed that at least one drone had hit the Energos Winter, a floating storage and regasification unit, while it was moored at the port. The resulting fire reportedly spread to a nearby LNG carrier, the GasLog Salem, according to the firm.
Crew members aboard both vessels were evacuated, and the ships were moved outside the port as a precaution while firefighters worked to bring the blaze under control. Egyptian authorities reported no casualties from the incident.
No group has claimed responsibility for the strike, and neither Egyptian officials nor maritime-security firms have formally attributed it to Iran. Trump nonetheless told reporters he had been briefed on the incident, calling it “a little more of the same” and signaling that US retaliation against Tehran was imminent. “We’re going to be hitting them very hard because it’s our turn to hit them,” he said.
The Damietta incident capped a day of rapidly widening violence across the region. Hours earlier, an Iranian strike hit a building used by a Chinese firm in northern Kuwait, severely damaging the structure and killing one worker. The strike came after Jordan’s air defenses shot down five missiles launched from Iran; Jordan’s armed forces said no casualties resulted from the interceptions.
The flurry of attacks followed an announcement from the US military that it had completed a “heavy wave” of strikes against Iran, hitting dozens of targets tied to Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps, including military command centers, missile and drone production facilities, and coastal surveillance and defense sites. US Central Command said the strikes were carried out in response to an earlier Iranian missile attack on an American base in Jordan.
The Damietta port fire marks one of the first instances of the conflict directly threatening international shipping and energy infrastructure outside the immediate war zone, raising fresh concerns about the safety of commercial vessels and energy supplies across the eastern Mediterranean as the region braces for further escalation.
