Oil prices surge after US attack in Middle East
Oil prices have jumped more than 4% amid concerns rising tensions in the Middle East could disrupt supplies after a targeted US attack on the ‘second-most powerful man in Iran’.
Brent crude futures were up by nearly $3 at $69.16 per barrel, the highest since September 17 after the attack early on Friday morning, which killed General Qassem Soleimani.
The US said the ‘strike was aimed at deterring future Iranian attack plans’, but there are concerns over when and how Iran will retaliate.
Iran has said it will take ‘vigorous revenge’.
The UK Foreign Office has urged calm, but the BBC’s security expert, Frank Gardner, told Radio 4’s Today programme there are fears of ‘another war in the Middle East’ if tensions escalate in the coming days.
The US carried out the attack after an Iranian-backed militia and other protesters breached the US embassy in Baghdad on New Year’s Eve.
Lisa
Lisa joined Travel Weekly nearly 25 years ago as technology reporter and then sailed around the world for a couple of years as cruise correspondent, before becoming deputy editor. Now freelance, Lisa writes for various print and web publications, edits Corporate Traveller’s client magazine, Gateway, and works on the acclaimed Remembering Wildlife series of photography books, which raise awareness of nature’s most at-risk species and helps to fund their protection.
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