Maritime Jewel
The Limburg was a French-flagged oil tanker, chartered by the Malaysian petrol firm Petronas. It was a double hull vessel, built in 2000; its length was 332 meters and its width was 58 meters.
Bombing
On October 6, 2002, the Limburg was carrying 397,000 barrels of crude oil from Iran to Malaysia, and was in the Gulf of Aden off Yemen to pick up another load of oil. While it was some miles offshore, an explosives-laden dinghy rammed the starboard side of the tanker and detonated. The vessel caught on fire and approximately 90,000 barrels of petrol leaked into the Gulf of Aden.
One crew member, a 38 year-old Bulgarian named Atanas Atanasov, was killed, and 12 other crew members were injured. The fire was put out, and four days later the Limburg was towed to Dubai, United Arab Emirates. The damage to the tanker was around $45 million USD. The ship was repaired by 2003 and sold to Tanker Pacific under the new name Maritime Jewel.
Al Qaeda claimed responsibility for the attack on the Jehad.net website, which has since been shut down. Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, who also planned the USS Cole bombing, is thought to have been the mastermind of the attack. Although Yemeni officials initially claimed that the explosion was the result of an accident, later investigations found traces of TNT on the damaged ship.
On February 3, 2006, Fawaz Yahya al-Rabeiee who had been sentenced to death for the Limburg attack and 22 other suspected or convicted Al-Qaeda members escaped from jail in Yemen. Jamal al-Badawi, who masterminded the USS Cole bombing of October 12 2000, was also among the escapees, in total thirteen of whom had been convicted of the Cole and Limburg bombings. [1]