MUSCAT, June 6: Cyclone Gonu battered Oman’s capital on Wednesday with fierce winds and torrential rains, flooding streets, disrupting oil exports, shutting down air service and forcing thousands from their homes.

Oil traders tracked the course of the storm as it veered northward toward Iran and the Strait of Hormuz -- the world’s most important crude oil tanker route.

The US military’s Joint Typhoon Warning Centre predicted that the storm would make landfall on the south-eastern Iranian coast late on Thursday, but sparing Iran’s offshore oil installations that lie more than 200km to the west.

But the storm could cause disruptions in oil shipments through the strait. About one-fifth of the world's oil passes through the narrow waterway at the south-eastern entrance to the Persian Gulf.

In Muscat, the storm unleashed sheets of rainfall and howling winds rarely seen in this quiet seaside capital. Police and emergency vehicles could hardly move through the flooded streets, and authorities used text messages to warn people to move away from low-lying areas.

The storm caused little damage to Oman's relatively small oilfields. But raging seas prevented tankers from sailing from Omani ports, according to Nasser bin Khamis al-Jashimi of the Ministry of Oil and Gas.

That effectively shut down the country's oil exports.

Authorities also closed all operations at the port of Sohar and evacuated 11,000 workers, port spokesman Dirk Jan De Vink said.

To the north, the port of Fujairah, in the United Arab Emirates, suspended all refuelling and ship-to-ship supply operations at the world's third-largest shipping fuel centre.

Ships were being allowed to berth but other marine activities were halted, causing a delay in the loading of oil tankers, officials said.—Agencies