MEA names MT On Peace after a Hormuz strike wounds 11 Indian crew

Eleven Indian sailors were among 12 crew injured on Tuesday when a projectile struck the Panama-flagged tanker MT On Peace while it was transiting the Strait of Hormuz off Oman. The Ministry of External Affairs named the ship, gave its IMO number as 9893204, and said the injured had been evacuated to Khasab with Omani help.

The vessel carried 19 crew, 17 of them Indian. Randhir Jaiswal, the MEA spokesperson, put the injury count at 12, including 11 Indians. The ministry's statement condemned the attack and said continuing strikes on shipping in the region were a cause of deep concern for India. It thanked the Omani authorities for the evacuation and for treatment in Khasab.

This is a separate incident from the engine-room fire on the Liberia-flagged LIPSI, which the UK Maritime Trade Operations office logged on 5 October after a strike at 16:37. LIPSI is managed by Dynacom. On Peace is a different hull, a different flag, and a different day. Treating them as one event understates how often commercial ships are now being hit in the same stretch of water.

The MEA text is narrow on purpose. It names the flag, the IMO number, the crew split, the injury split, and the place of treatment. It does not name the weapon, the launcher, or a responsible party. That gap is the reporting constraint. Indian officials have condemned a pattern of attacks on commercial shipping. They have not, in this statement, assigned the projectile.

Khasab sits on the Musandam peninsula, on the Omani side of the strait, and has become the practical landing point for crews taken off ships in this lane. The fact that Omani authorities could evacuate the injured and get them into treatment is the operational detail that matters for the families. Seventeen Indian nationals were on board. Eleven of them are in a hospital in Khasab, not still on the ship.

The arithmetic of Indian exposure is the part of this story that does not depend on who fired. A tanker with 17 Indians in a crew of 19 is not an outlier in this trade. Indian seafarers staff a large share of the product and crude tankers that still attempt the strait. Each new injury list is therefore a labour story as well as a shipping story. The MEA's habit of issuing a named-ship statement, with an IMO number, is how Delhi is now keeping a public ledger.

The International Chamber of Commerce has already told the Wall Street Journal that the Hormuz disruption has taken something close to 40 percent of fertiliser capacity off the market, about 2.7 million tonnes, and UNCTAD has put about a third of fertiliser shipments on the strait route. On Peace is not a fertiliser carrier in the MEA text. It is a commercial vessel. The link is the lane, not the cargo. A projectile that wounds 11 Indians on a Panama-flagged hull is the same lane that has already forced rerouting, war-risk premia, and the withdrawal of some owners.

What Tuesday's statement adds is a dated, numbered case. IMO 9893204. Nineteen crew. Seventeen Indian. Twelve injured. Eleven of those Indian. Treatment in Khasab. Condemnation without attribution. The next useful fact, which the ministry has not given, is the condition of the 11 and whether the ship is still able to move. Until that is public, the confirmed picture stops at the hospital door in Khasab.

Owners and insurers read these statements as a sequence, not as isolated condemnations. A Liberia-flagged ship with an engine-room fire on Monday and a Panama-flagged ship with 12 injured on Tuesday is two hulls in two days in the same strait. War-risk underwriters price that sequence. So do the managers who decide whether an Indian crew stays on a fixture that still routes through Hormuz. The MEA cannot set that premium. It can, and on Tuesday did, put a name and an IMO number on the latest injury list.

The evacuation detail is also a constraint on what Delhi can claim. The statement says the injured "have since been evacuated" with Omani assistance and are receiving treatment in Khasab. It does not say the ship is safe, abandoned, or under tow. It does not give ages, ranks, or home states of the 11. Those facts will matter to the families and to the shipping company. They are not in the public note. The confirmed official record stops at the count, the flag, the number 9893204, and the hospital town.