Eleven Indian crew injured as a projectile hits MT On Peace off Oman

A projectile struck the Panama-flagged tanker MT On Peace in the Strait of Hormuz off Oman on Tuesday morning and injured 11 Indian seafarers, the Ministry of External Affairs said. The ship, IMO 9893204, had 19 crew on board. Seventeen were Indian. Twelve people were hurt in all, 11 of them Indian. Omani authorities helped evacuate the injured, who were being treated in Khasab.

The ministry statement, carried by spokesperson Randhir Jaiswal, condemned the attack and said the targeting of commercial shipping, seafarers and civilian infrastructure in the region had to stop. It asked for navigation and commerce through international waterways to be restored. India did not name the party that fired. The statement described a projectile, not a navy, a militia or a state.

The Wire, citing the same ministry account, put Tuesday's injuries in a longer count: about a dozen Indian seafarers killed in attacks on commercial vessels around the Strait of Hormuz since the regional war began in February, and more than 20 injured before this ship was hit. Those figures are the paper's tally from earlier incidents, not a new official total published on Tuesday. They are the reason a single tanker with 17 Indian crew is being read in New Delhi as part of a sequence rather than as an isolated accident.

On Peace is a commercial tanker under the Panama flag, which is the world's largest registry and tells a reader little about who owns or insures the hull. The useful identifiers are the IMO number, the crew nationality and the place. The strait is the narrow exit from the Gulf. Ships that pass it are within reach of shore-based weapons on more than one coast. Khasab, where the injured were taken, sits on the Musandam peninsula, the Omani territory that looks across the strait. Treatment there means the evacuation was local and fast, not a diversion to a distant port.

The ministry's language is narrower than a war communique. It names the flag, the IMO number, the crew split, the injury split and the Omani role. It does not name a weapon type beyond projectile, a time more precise than earlier today, or a casualty among the dead. Twelve injured and no death reported on this hull is a different outcome from the fatal attacks the Wire counted since February. It is still a medical evacuation of Indian nationals from a war zone at sea, and it still requires the consular machinery in Muscat.

Shipping through Hormuz has been the pressure point of the Iran war since February. Insurers, charterers and crews already price the passage. An attack that puts 11 Indians in a Khasab hospital changes the Indian file even if it does not change the war. New Delhi has condemned earlier strikes on merchant ships and has repeated the demand that civilian passage be restored. Tuesday's statement is that demand attached to a named ship and a named injury count.

What is still missing is the flag state report from Panama, the owner's statement, and any claim of responsibility. Until those arrive, the public record is the Indian one: MT On Peace, IMO 9893204, 19 crew, 17 Indian, 12 injured, 11 Indian, evacuated with Omani help, treated in Khasab, condemned in New Delhi. The next number that will matter is whether any of the 11 move from injured to dead, and whether a second Indian-crewed ship is hit before this crew leaves the hospital.

The strait remains open in the formal sense. It is not open in the sense that a licensed commercial tanker can cross it without a projectile risk that India has now tied, again, to its own seafarers. Seventeen Indians on one hull is a large share of a small crew. Eleven of them are the casualty list from a single morning off Oman.