Explosions hit a natural gas loading port on the Mediterranean Sea in Egypt on Wednesday, and British maritime security company Ambrey said a US-owned floating storage tanker there had been hit ​by a drone, reported Reuters in a potential spread of the Middle East war.

The drone hit a vessel in the Egyptian port of Damietta, causing a fire that spread to another vessel, three trading ‌sources familiar with the incident said.

The crew were evacuated and the fire had been brought under control, Ambrey said.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the incident.

Damietta, located in the northern Nile Delta, had been named by Iranian television just two days earlier as a possible target for retaliation against Ukrainian interests following Kyiv’s unusual strike on an Iranian vessel in the Caspian Sea over the weekend, reported Iranian media. 

Top Iranian official had threatened retaliation against assets connected to European oil and gas supplies after the Ukrainian strike in new carried in the local media.

An explosion took place at the liquid natural gas terminal at Egypt’s Damietta Port as cargo was being unloaded, reported Times of Israel.

The drone hit floating storage tanker Energos Winter, causing a fire that then spread to another vessel, Gaslog Salem, three trading sources familiar with the incident say. Two separate security sources say the cause of the blast was a drone strike.

The crew was evacuated and the fire brought under control, says Ambrey, adding that no party had claimed responsibility, it stated.

Earlier on Wednesday the US and Saudi Arabia struck Iran-backed paramilitary groups in Iraq, and US President Donald Trump vowed revenge for firing on US troops days after he halted air strikes.

Iran confirmed overnight that it had fired on US bases in Jordan and at ships in the Strait of Hormuz, and also spurned an Omani proposal ​to jointly manage the strait.

Oil prices shot up Wednesday in one of the sharpest spikes ​of the five-month war. Brent crude futures rose more than 8% to push the benchmark well above $90 a barrel, reversing much of a plunge earlier this week when ⁠Trump had unexpectedly halted US strikes over the weekend.

The abrupt resumption of attacks only days after they were suspended saw a return to the volatile on-again-off-again pattern of earlier phases in the war.

The US-Iran war has already had a negative economic impact on Egypt. Now new threats from the Houthi group in Yemen are likely to worsen that. At the same time, Egypt is trying to stay on good terms with all parties, reported DW.

"Economically, Egypt is in a very ambivalent situation," says Stefan Lukas, director of German think tank Middle East Minds.

During 2025 and 2026, revenues from canal transits actually went up again, mainly because oil from the Gulf states was transported via Saudi pipelines to the Red Sea and then onwards through the Suez Canal. 

This was to avoid the Strait of Hormuz, which is being blocked by Iran and the US in turns. But the new threats by the Houthis to block the Bab el-Mandeb Strait could interfere with this alternative route.

Meanwhile, the top US commander for the Middle East has warned troops that cellphone videos shared online can ​help Iran target American bases, and sources told Reuters some deployed personnel could soon be ordered to surrender their phones, reported Reuters.

Any crackdown on mobile communications would add a new dimension ‌to the conflict for the thousands of U.S. troops in the region, many of whom still rely on phones to periodically message loved ones and assure them they are well, it added.