Commercial vessels are pictured offshore in Dubai . AFP
Through Wednesday night, there had been at least 16 vessels attacked in the Persian Gulf and the wider region, according to the Joint Maritime Information Center, a coalition overseen by the U.S. Navy.
An oil rig separately was attacked off Saudi Arabia, as well.
Overnight, two ships were hit by Iranian fire at a port near Basra, Iraq.
Another was attacked Thursday off the coast of the United Arab Emirates.
The British military’s United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations center said the attack happened just before dawn. It said an “unknown projectile” hit the vessel as it was some 65 kilometers (40 miles) off the coast of Dubai’s Jebel Ali port.
Iran has a stranglehold on the Strait of Hormuz, the waterway leading from the Persian Gulf toward the Indian Ocean through which a fifth of the world's oil is transported.
With traffic in the strait effectively stopped, the price of Brent crude oil, the international standard, rose another 9% to more than $100 a barrel, up some 38% over what it cost when the war started.
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