A Palau-flagged oil tanker was hit on Sunday off the coast of Oman, leaving four persons on board injured, the Oman Maritime Security Centre said.

Fifteen of the 20 persons on the tanker, named Skylight, were Indians, while the remaining five were Iranians. All of them have been evacuated, the authority stated.

The Oman Maritime Security Centre did not specify what hit the vessel. However, the strike took place amid a wave of retaliatory strikes by Tehran following joint attacks by the United States and Israel on Iran that killed its Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

The oil tanker was hit around 5 nautical miles north of the Khasab Port in the Musandam governorate on the strategic Strait of Hormuz, the maritime security centre said in a social media post.

The registered owner of the oil tanker Skylight is Sea Force Inc and the vessel is managed by Red Sea Ship Management LLC, Reuters reported.

The Musandam peninsula in Oman shares control of the Strait of Hormuz with Iran. The Strait of Hormuz is a narrow channel that connects the Persian Gulf with the Gulf of Oman and Arabian Sea, and nearly a fifth of the world’s oil supply passes through it.

On Saturday, Israel and the US launched a joint operation to target the Iranian regime, claiming that they were doing so to remove “existential threats to Israel”. Iran retaliated to the attacks and said that the US-Israeli operation had begun while the nuclear negotiations were on.

Israel has been claiming that Iran is “closer than ever” to obtaining a nuclear weapon, which could alter the regional security balance. Iran has long maintained that its nuclear programme is for civilian purposes.