Kuwait City, Kuwait ? A French oil tanker carrying nearly 1.6 million gallons of crude oil was rocked by an explosion and engulfed in flames off the coast of Yemen Sunday morning in an incident Yemeni authorities blamed on an oil leak but the ship’s owner contended was a terrorist attack.

Yemen’s state-run SABA news agency quoted an unidentified government official as saying an oil leak caused a fire on the supertanker, named the Limburg, as it was nearing the port of Mina al-Dabah, on the southern coast of Yemen about 350 miles east of Aden. The official said the Limburg’s captain, Hubert Ardillon, told Yemeni authorities the fire set off an explosion at 9:15 a.m. as the crew attempted to get the blaze under control, SABA reported.

But the director of the company that owns the vessel insisted the explosion was the result of a “deliberate attack that appears to be terrorism.”

Jacques Moizan, the director of Euronav, said in a telephone interview from the company’s headquarters in Nantes, France, that a small speedboat pulled up to the tanker’s starboard side immediately before the explosion. He said Euronav officials believe the speedboat was carrying explosives because of the size of the blast.

The Limburg, he said, has a double hull and likely would not have been severely damaged in an ordinary collision with a small boat. “We cannot imagine an accident causing such a large explosion,” he said.

Moizan also said the fire began after the explosion, not before. He said his statements were based on a conversation that Ardillon, the captain, had with company officials after he reached shore Sunday afternoon.

Yemeni officials acknowledged to SABA that a boat pulled alongside the tanker, but they said it was carrying a pilot to help guide the ship into port.

Faris Sanabani, editor of the English-language Yemen Observer newspaper, said his reporters talked to witnesses who offered contradictory versions, with some saying the large explosion was preceded by a fire and two smaller explosions. Others said the explosion occurred as the speedboat neared the ship, Sanabani said.

“It’s too early to know what happened,” he said.

In Paris, a Foreign Ministry spokesman, Francois Rivasseau, said his government did not “have enough elements to allow us to formulate a … hypothesis which would point to a terrorist attack.”

In October 2000, suicide attackers on a small explosive-laden skiff struck an American warship, the USS Cole, during a refueling stop at the port of Aden. The blast, which killed 17 sailors, was blamed on Yemeni supporters of Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaida terrorist network.

Of the Limburg’s 25 crew members, all but one, a Bulgaian, were reported to be safely ashore.

Fire continued to rage Sunday night aboard the ship, which was reported by local officials to be drifting toward shore under a billowing cloud of acrid, black smoke. The explosion caused thousands of gallons of oil to spill into the sea.