Iran said Saturday it would release the crew members of a Portuguese-flagged ship that its forces seized this month in the Gulf.<\/p>\n
The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps took over the MSC Aries with 25 crew members on board near the Strait of Hormuz on April 13.
\nTehran later said the ship belonged to its arch-foe Israel and was being investigated for alleged violations of international maritime law.
\n\u201cThe humanitarian issue of the release of the ship\u2019s crew is of great concern to us,\u201d Iran\u2019s Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian said in a phone call with his Portuguese counterpart Paulo Rangel.
\n\u201cWe have given consular access to their ambassadors in Tehran and announced to the envoys that the crew members will be released and extradition,\u201d he was quoted as saying in a statement from his ministry, without elaborating.
\nFollowing the ship\u2019s seizure, Portugal summoned Iran\u2019s ambassador to demand its immediate release.
\nOn April 18, India said one of the 17 Indian crew members had returned home and that the others were granted consular access.
\n\u201cThey are in good health, and they are not facing any problems on the ship. As for their return, there are some technicalities involved in it,\u201d an Indian foreign ministry spokesman said on Thursday.
\nThe ship\u2019s seizure took place hours before Iran carried out its first-ever direct attack on Israel, launching hundreds of drones and missiles.
\nThe Israeli military said nearly all of the projectiles were intercepted.
\nIsrael and the United States have denounced the seizure of the ship as an act of \u201cpiracy\u201d.
\nRegional tensions have soared since war broke out nearly seven months ago between Israel and Palestinian militant group Hamas in the Gaza Strip.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Iran said Saturday it would release the crew members of a Portuguese-flagged ship that its forces seized this month in the Gulf. The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps took over the MSC Aries with 25 crew members on board near the Strait of Hormuz on April 13. Tehran later said the ship belonged to its arch-foe …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":20014,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-20007","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-international"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20007","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20007"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20007\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20015,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20007\/revisions\/20015"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/20014"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20007"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20007"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20007"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}