Eleven Indian crew are hurt after a projectile hits MT On Peace in the Strait of Hormuz

A projectile struck the Panama-flagged tanker MT On Peace in the Strait of Hormuz off Oman on Tuesday morning and injured 11 Indian crew. The Ministry of External Affairs named the ship by its IMO number, 9893204, and said 17 of the 19 people on board were Indian nationals. Twelve crew were hurt in all, 11 of them Indian. Omani authorities helped evacuate the injured to Khasab, where they were being treated on Tuesday evening. The ministry's statement, issued through spokesperson Randhir Jaiswal, is the primary public record. It condemns the strike and says the targeting of commercial shipping, seafarers and civilian infrastructure in the region has to stop.

The statement did not identify who fired the projectile. It also did not say whether the ship was inbound or outbound, what cargo it carried, or whether the engine room or the hull took the hit. The United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations centre had separately reported a tanker struck by an unknown projectile in the strait, with a fire in the engine room and no environmental impact. Indian officials did not confirm that the UKMTO notice and the On Peace were the same incident. Matching them would require a time, a position and a hull name. The ministry gave the hull. It did not give the position beyond "off the coast of Oman" in the Strait of Hormuz.

The strait is about 33 kilometres wide at its narrowest, between Iran and the Omani Musandam peninsula. A large share of the oil and liquefied gas that leaves the Gulf still passes through it. Traffic has been under attack since the Iran war widened in February. The Wire, citing the running toll, said about a dozen Indian seafarers had been killed in strikes on commercial vessels around the strait since then, and more than 20 injured before Tuesday's count. The ministry did not repeat that cumulative figure. What it did confirm is the new injury list: 11 Indians on one ship, in one morning, off the Omani coast. Insurers price that list by hull, not by nationality. An IMO number in a government statement is what lets a club and a manager open a file. 9893204 is that number.

Khasab sits on Musandam, the Omani exclave that looks across the strait. Taking wounded crew there is faster than a run south to Muscat. Indian diplomats in Oman are the usual point of contact for next of kin. The ministry said it was in touch with Omani authorities. It did not publish the names of the injured or say how many of the 11 were in a serious condition. Families will get those details through the shipping company and the mission, not from the public note. Panama, the flag state, had not issued its own casualty notice by Tuesday evening in the reports available in Delhi.

The strike landed on the same day Houthi forces and the Saudi-led coalition were exchanging fire further south, at Jazan and Najran and around Bab el-Mandeb. The On Peace attack is a different waterway and, on the evidence published so far, an unidentified firer. Panama-registered product and crude tankers have been hit repeatedly this year because they are the ships actually moving Gulf oil. Until the manager or the flag state publishes a damage survey, the public record stops at 12 injured crew, 11 of them Indian, a named hull, and a government demand that the firing stop. The next document that would move the story is a surveyor's note on 9893204, or a claim of responsibility that names the ship.