The United Nations' shipping agency has suspended a fledgling operation to escort stranded vessels and crews out of the Persian Gulf, hours after a containership was hit by a projectile off Oman — a sign of how fragile maritime safety remains despite a recent ceasefire.

A pause "until further clarity"

The International Maritime Organization (IMO) said it was pausing the evacuation after the incident, putting crew safety first. "The safety of the seafarers remains paramount," its secretary-general, Arsenio Dominguez, said, adding that operations would be halted until the agency could confirm that the safety guarantees behind the plan still held, Al Jazeera reported.

The vessel involved, the Singapore-flagged containership Ever Lovely, operated by Evergreen Marine, was struck on its starboard side near the bridge while transiting southeast of an Omani port, The Maritime Executive reported. No casualties were reported, and the ship continued under its own power toward Fujairah. The UK Maritime Trade Operations center confirmed a vessel had been hit, reporting no injuries. The Ever Lovely was not itself formally enrolled in the IMO evacuation scheme.

What the operation was for

Launched only days earlier, the IMO initiative was designed to help roughly 600 vessels and about 11,000 stranded mariners leave the Gulf safely, routed along the Omani and Emirati coasts away from Iran's sea lanes, PBS NewsHour reported. Before the pause, dozens of ships carrying around a thousand seafarers had completed the passage, with major carriers among them. The agency, which framed seafarers as "collateral victims" of a geopolitical conflict, issued its statement on the annual Day of the Seafarer.

Why Hormuz matters

The Strait of Hormuz is one of the world's most important shipping chokepoints. At its narrowest it is about 33 km (21 miles) wide, and roughly a fifth of the world's oil supply, along with large volumes of liquefied natural gas, passes through it. Daily traffic has fallen sharply since the conflict escalated earlier in the year, with many commercial operators suspending normal transits and war-risk insurance premiums rising.

Attribution unconfirmed

No party has formally claimed responsibility for the strike on the Ever Lovely, and the type of weapon used has not been officially confirmed; maritime security sources have suggested a drone, which could not be verified. Iran's Revolutionary Guard had, before the incident, publicly objected to the southern evacuation route as "unacceptable," and a separate Iranian maritime authority warned that ships using "unauthorised routes" did so at their own risk. Western officials noted the timing, but no government has formally attributed the attack.

A fragile moment

The incident comes during a delicate 60-day window opened by a US-Iran memorandum of understanding signed the previous week, intended to settle disputes including maritime passage and Iran's nuclear program — an interim step rather than a final settlement. The IMO said it would work to restore conditions for the operation to resume but gave no timetable. For the thousands of crew still waiting aboard ships in the Gulf, the pause is a significant setback.