One Indian seafarer still missing after strike on MT El Gaia
The MEA said 13 of 14 Indian crew on the Panama-flagged tanker were taken ashore off Oman. The embassy in Muscat is working with Omani search teams. New Delhi again called for de-escalation in West Asia.
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India's Ministry of External Affairs condemned an attack on the Panama-flagged tanker MT El Gaia off the Omani coast on Sunday and said 13 of the 14 Indian crew had been rescued. Search and rescue for the missing seafarer continued on Monday. The Embassy of India in Muscat said the 13 had been shifted ashore and thanked Omani authorities for the work still under way on the fourteenth.
"We condemn the attack on the commercial vessel MT El Gaia off the coast of Oman earlier today. Of the 14 Indian crew onboard, 13 Indians have been rescued so far. Search and Rescue operations for the missing Indian national are continuing," the MEA said. It added that the embassy was coordinating with Omani agencies and that commercial ships, seafarers and civilian infrastructure should not be targets. New Delhi repeated its call for immediate de-escalation in West Asia.
The tanker had been operating in waters that sit on the approach to the Strait of Hormuz, where traffic has been disrupted since the US-Israel war on Iran began in February. Attribution for Sunday's strike had not been published by the MEA at the time of the statement. Iranian state media separately reported that an Iranian cargo ship was hit off Qeshm Island in the same window. Those are two incidents, not one, and they should not be collapsed.
Indian seafarers are heavily represented on the world's product and crude tankers. That fact has turned every new strike in the Gulf of Oman and the Strait into a consular event in Delhi. The Indian Express noted that ten Indian seafarers are among 16 Indians killed so far in the wider West Asia conflict, with another five dead in strikes on merchant ships in the Black Sea. Those tallies are why the MEA statement led with crew numbers rather than flag or cargo.
The embassy's sequence was precise. Fourteen Indians on the manifest. Thirteen accounted for and ashore. One still missing. Omani teams still searching. That is the operational picture as of Monday. Names of the rescued crew and of the missing sailor had not been released in the official notes.
The attack landed on the same day Oman postponed a Gulf-Iran meeting in Salalah that was supposed to discuss temporary Hormuz routing. The two events share a geography and a week. They do not yet share a proven causal link. What they share for Indian officials is a reminder that the country's largest export of labour to the sea is now moving through two war zones at once.
Delhi's public line remains de-escalation and protection of commercial shipping. It does not, in the El Gaia note, name a perpetrator or announce a change in routing advice. Shipping companies will make that change themselves. War-risk premia on Gulf of Oman passages are already high. A missing crew member on a Panama-flagged tanker will not lower them.
Until the fourteenth sailor is found, the story is a search. After that it becomes an investigation, and then a diplomatic file. The MEA has put the first two sentences on record. The rest depends on what Omani crews pull out of the water.
