Two dozen Indian sailors aboard an oil tanker struck by a U.S. missile off the coast of Oman on Monday sent frantic SOS messages for more than two hours before they were rescued.
“We have fire onboard, we have fire onboard. And vessel is sinking,” a crew member on board the ship, the Marivex, said in a voice message to Indian shipping authorities and organizations.
“Please help, please help … We are all crew Indian. 24 crew,” the crew member added in the message, which was shared with The New York Times by Manoj Yadav, the general secretary of an Indian seafarers’ union.
All the sailors were later rescued by a military helicopter from Oman and were taken ashore to Masirah Island, off Oman’s coast.
The U.S. military’s Central Command later said that it had “disabled” the Marivex because the ship had violated its naval blockade of Iran by attempting to sail to an Iranian port. It said that a fighter jet from the U.S.S. Abraham Lincoln aircraft carrier had fired “into the ship’s engineering and steering spaces” after the crew failed to comply with directions from U.S. forces.
Central Command said that it had disabled seven “noncompliant vessels” since April 13, when the Trump administration initiated a blockade of ships traveling to or from Iranian ports in an effort to put pressure on Tehran to make a deal to end hostilities with the United States.
Both the United States and Iran have sought to exert control over the Strait of Hormuz — a vital maritime waterway for transporting oil, gas and other critical commodities — since they agreed to a cease-fire in April. Iran says that only ships that have permission from its Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps will be allowed to pass.
India’s shipping ministry said that it had received “reports of a fire” starting at about 1:30 p.m. Monday on the Marivex, a Palau-flagged vessel. The ministry’s initial statement on the matter did not specify the cause of the fire.
Mr. Yadav, the general secretary of the Forward Seamen’s Union of India, said he started receiving messages from the crew a little after 2 p.m. Then came a flurry of frantic calls, messages and voice notes pleading for help, he said.
Videos the crew shared with Mr. Yadav showed a fire in the engine room. One of the two lifeboats on the ship had been destroyed when the ship was hit and the second was inaccessible, he said.
Mr. Yadav gathered the videos and messages and posted them on social media, tagging the Indian navy and India’s foreign affairs ministry. He said that the Indian Embassy in Oman then reached out to him and rescue efforts began.
By 4:15 p.m., Mr. Yadav began receiving videos from the crew showing them being rescued by helicopter.
At a news conference on Tuesday, Randhir Jaiswal, a spokesman for India’s foreign affairs ministry, said the ship had been “disabled” — echoing the U.S. Central Command — but that the crew was safe. He thanked the Omani government for rescuing the seafarers.
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