PARIS, Oct 7: Although French authorities are admitting in private that Sunday’s explosion on the French-owned oil tanker, the Limburg, off Yemen was probably due to a terrorist attack, the government has so far refrained from describing the incident as anything more than an accident.

The vessel was still burning in the Gulf of Aden, not far from the port city of Mukalla till Monday evening.

The French foreign office issued a special statement on Sunday in which it noted that any explanation other than an accident would be at the moment “premature”.

The statement said that Yemeni authorities were undertaking their own investigation into the matter, and that any decision as to an explanation of the causes would have to await their conclusions.

Government officials told Dawn there was a “fifty-fifty chance” that the explosion was due to a terrorist attack.

They said Yemeni interrogators had informed their counterparts in Paris that an inflatable raft apparently loaded with explosives had rammed the ship.

Other French sources blamed the attack on the Al Qaeda, recalling that several members of the network had recently regrouped in Yemen, and that the attack was being interpreted by French diplomats as being a warning not to support a US-sponsored resolution at the UN on the Iraq issue.