After a night of speculation, the Egyptian Cabinet said on Thursday morning that the fire that broke out aboard two energy vessels at Damietta Port the day before was caused by a drone strike, though it did not disclose who launched the drone.

A worker at the port who witnessed the incident says they heard a massive explosion at 2:10 pm on Wednesday. The blast occurred at berth 27, at the far end of the port near an area known as the silos zone, close to the facilities of SEGAS , the company that operates the Damietta liquefaction plant.

Police immediately sealed off the site and established a security cordon, the witness tells Mada Masr. “No extra security measures happened , and nobody had their phones taken. They cordoned off the berth. Ambulances arrived, but none left carrying casualties. They just closed off the area and we carried on with our workday as normal,” they say.

Two parliamentary sources speaking to Mada Masr confirm that the incident occurred at around 2:30 pm. Vessel traffic at the port was subsequently suspended until the affected ship had been towed out of the port basin. After 6 pm, navigation resumed, the sources say, which was confirmed by the Damietta Port Authority in a statement on Thursday.

The vessel targeted was the Energos Winter , a floating liquified natural gas regasification unit owned by the American New Fortress Energy. Last summer, the Egyptian Natural Gas Holding Company signed a five-year agreement with the company for hiring the vessel.

A second vessel nearby was also seen aflame.

A source at the Petroleum Ministry says the Energos Winter had been operating at full capacity, supplying between 400 million and 500 million cubic feet of natural gas per day to the national grid — around six percent of Egypt’s peak summer demand of 7.5 billion cubic feet daily. It was one of four regasification vessels on which the country currently relies.

The vessel has now been taken out of service and is not expected to return anytime soon, the source says. It will leave Egypt for maintenance and repairs for the damage sustained in the strike.

As an interim measure, the source says Egypt will rely on the Energos Force , a regasification vessel stationed at Aqaba. Under an agreement reached with Jordan in late 2024 , Egypt can draw on part of the vessel’s operating capacity in emergencies, i n addition to increasing the use of Mazut to meet any energy interruption .

Thursday’s government statement confirmed what has been already circulated by international media outlets the day of the strike: that the fire was caused by a drone strike. The first official statement, issued on Wednesday by the Petroleum Ministry, had referred only to the fire, without mentioning its cause or denying the international press reports.

From the outset, Egyptian state institutions were intent on carefully controlling media coverage of the incident. Egyptian newspapers took down a report quoting TV host and MP Mostafa Bakry, who had cited what he described as “security sources” denying that the fire had resulted from a drone attack. The report was removed within minutes of publication.

That approach was clearly reflected in the following day’s press coverage, with most outlets making no mention of the incident. The few that did cover it merely carried the Petroleum Ministry’s statement briefly and on an inside page.

But as maritime security firms, including Ambrey and Vanguard, publicly said that a drone strike had caused the fire, the government decided to reveal that detail itself, while stressing that “no party has claimed responsibility for the incident.”

A senior Cabinet source says that the Petroleum Ministry’s Wednesday statement was issued at the direct instruction of the presidency, with orders for its immediate release before anyone else could comment. The government later received instructions to disclose that a drone had been involved, which it did in Thursday morning’s statement, the source adds.

One of the parliamentary sources says Thursday’s statement most likely came after authorities realized the matter can no longer be concealed. “The international press is talking. There are satellites. It can’t stay hidden,” they say.

According to the second parliamentary source, US President Donald Trump’s remarks on Wednesday that he had been briefed on the incident left the government no choice but to reveal and explain what had happened.

Nasr Salem, the former head of the Armed Forces …