'Flurry of missiles': Indian sailors risk work at sea as Middle East war grinds on

Born to landless Indian farmers, Sunil Pooniya thought a job at sea would be his ticket out of poverty, instead his first voyage saw him diving into the ocean to escape a deadly attack driven by the US-Israel war on Iran. For hundreds of thousands of Indians, merchant shipping jobs are a lucrative proposition despite the inherent risks. The attack on Pooniya’s ship killed two fellow Indians — the country’s sailors are among the highest merchant maritime casualties from the Middle East war. Dalip Singh and Ashish Kumar Singh were the first Indians killed in the conflict, after their oil tanker was hit on March 1 by projectiles off Oman’s Khasab port. “There was a huge noise and the whole ship shook,” Pooniya recalled. “I thought something had gone wrong with the engine, but a missile had hit us,” Pooniya added, who had been on the Palau-flagged MV Skylight. “The whole ship was up in flames.” Pooniya, 26, had travelled together with Dalip to Dubai, where they boarded the tanker. “Everyone jumped into the sea wearing life jackets,” Pooniya told AFP, now back home in India. “I screamed for Dalip, but he was gone in the fire.” India is one of the largest contributors of sailors on merchant shipping worldwide, with more than 320,000 active seafarers in 2025, according to the country’s shipping ministry. Eleven merchant sailors have been killed in the conflict, according to the International Maritime Organization (IMO). At least four were Indian. Iran has restricted shipping through the Strait of Hormuz — which normally carries about one-fifth of the world’s oil and liquefied natural gas (LNG) shipments — since the United States and Israel launched attacks on February 28. The US has imposed its own naval blockade on Iranian ports. ‘Flurry of missiles’ Ships have been hit by projectiles and fired on in dozens of incidents, according to the British maritime security monitor UKMTO. An Indian-flagged ship carrying livestock from Somalia was reported to have been hit and sunk o