The International Maritime Organization (IMO) announced on Friday that an evacuation operation launched following the signing of the US-Iran memorandum of understanding had succeeded in moving 115 ships and around 2,500 sailors out of the Gulf through the Strait of Hormuz.
Arsenio Dominguez, the Secretary-General of the United Nations agency, said that "despite our suspension of evacuation operations yesterday — following an attack targeting a vessel — some ships are still passing through the southern part of the Strait of Hormuz."
The organization intends to evacuate a total of 11,000 sailors aboard 600 ships that had been stranded in the Gulf due to the war, via two routes: one near the Iranian coast and the other near the Omani coast, in coordination with local authorities.
However, the operation was suspended on Thursday following an attack that targeted one of the vessels.
The attack came after Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps warned that passage through the Strait of Hormuz must be restricted to the route designated by Tehran.
The IMO, through its Secretary-General, reaffirmed that it had received guarantees that the ships would not be targeted. Dominguez stressed that the evacuation operation would resume as soon as he had "received additional assurances to that effect."
As for the vessel targeted in the attack, the "Ever Lovely," it had taken the route near the Omani coast without "communicating with Omani authorities," as Dominguez explained.
He added: "I cannot at this time confirm whether they communicated, for example, with the United States to transit the Strait of Hormuz."
The Secretary-General reiterated his expectation that the evacuation operation would take several weeks.