One Indian missing after MT El Gaia is hit off Oman

The Ministry of External Affairs said on 13 September that it condemned an attack on the Panama-flagged products tanker MT El Gaia off Oman and that 13 of 14 Indian crew members had been rescued. Search and rescue for the missing seafarer continued, coordinated by the embassy in Muscat with Omani authorities. Local reporting named him as Sumit Kumar Singh of Muzaffarpur, Bihar. His brother Vivek Kumar Singh appealed publicly to External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar.

The United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations centre issued a red alert and said the ship had been struck by an unidentified munition while transiting the Strait of Hormuz, with a fire on board. The vessel's IMO number is 9325336. Trackers showed its AIS had been dark for more than five days after a call at Fujairah. Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps later said the El Gaia had hit a sea mine on a southern track through the strait. The United States rejected that account. India did not endorse either version in its first statement. It called the targeting of commercial shipping, seafarers and civilian infrastructure unacceptable and asked for de-escalation.

Why this hull was already on a list

Security firms had reported that Iran's Persian Gulf Strait Authority had added 11 ships to a non-compliant list, bringing the published total to 57. El Gaia was on that list. The authority had said listed ships could face fines, seizure or confiscation on later Hormuz transits, and that ships doing ship-to-ship transfers with listed hulls could be treated the same way. That administrative mark does not by itself prove who fired, or whether a mine was laid in the lane. It does show the tanker was already in an Iranian compliance fight before the fire.

The timing sat one day after Prime Minister Narendra Modi, at the BRICS meetings in Delhi, proposed a BRICS Seafarers Emergency Support Network for mariners caught in maritime crises. Ten Indian seafarers have been among 16 Indians killed so far in the wider West Asia conflict, on figures circulated with the MEA statement. Five more Indian seafarers have died in strikes on merchant ships in the Black Sea. Indian crews are common on products tankers in both theatres. That is why each new fire produces an MEA note within hours.

What is still unknown

Omani rescuers have the 13. They do not yet have Singh. The cause of the strike is contested. IRGC, US and UKMTO accounts do not match. The ship's owner and insurer had not, in the first day's public record, issued a detailed damage report. Hormuz remains the lane that, in peacetime, carries about a fifth of traded oil and gas. A products tanker on a non-compliant list, burning after an unidentified hit, is now part of the same week in which Houthi units took the Hanish islands on the Red Sea detour. For Indian manning agencies the operational fact is narrower. One more crew is split between a port in Oman and a search.