An Indian seafarer was killed and six others were injured on Tuesday when missiles struck two Emirati oil tankers crossing the Strait of Hormuz – in what was among the deadliest attacks since Iran and the US resumed open hostilities over the weekend.
The tankers, Mombasa and Al Bahiyah, were hit while transiting the strait’s southern shipping lane within Omani territorial waters, the UAE said in a statement. The attack came two days after Iran struck the Cyprus-flagged container ship GFS Galaxy, leaving one Indian seafarer missing. Ten others aboard were rescued.
Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) said the tankers had “ignored repeated warnings” before being “targeted and disabled”, and accused Washington of “inciting vessels to use an illegal route”.
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India’s ships and seafarers
The human toll among Indians in West Asia has been climbing since the war began on February 28, when Israel and the US struck Iran, prompting Tehran to retaliate and plunge the Gulf region into conflict.
The death toll among Indians in the conflict was 14 till Tuesday.
An official status report — tracking incidents specifically involving Indian-flagged vessels or foreign-flagged ships with Indian crew — had recorded seven confirmed fatalities and one presumed dead as of Monday evening. Tuesday’s death aboard the Mombasa was added to the count.
Separately, three Indian sailors were killed last month when the US struck the Palau-flagged tanker MT Settebello.
Monday’s status report said seven Indian vessels remain in the Persian Gulf, west of the strait, carrying 148 Indian seafarers.
A wider set of 11 vessels “of Indian interest” — a mix of India-flagged ships and foreign-flagged vessels carrying India-bound cargo — have been earmarked for evacuation. Four of them are hauling fertilisers.
Since March 1, the day after the conflict erupted, 57 vessels carrying India-bound cargo have transited the strait. About 21 of these were India-flagged and 36 foreign-flagged, the report said.
The foreign-flagged ships were registered in the Marshall Islands (nine), Liberia (eight), Panama (five), and two each in Portugal, Saudi Arabia, Malta and Singapore, and one each in the Cayman Islands, Greece, Gibraltar, Vietnam, China and Hong Kong.
By type, they comprised 25 bulk carriers, 14 LPG carriers, 13 crude oil tankers, two LNG carriers, a container vessel, an oil/chemical tanker and a diving support vessel.
The report said just 19 ships made the crossing in the roughly three-and-a-half months between March 1 and June 17, when Iran and the US signed their interim peace deal. In the 26 days since, 38 more had crossed.
Among the more recent transits was the Liberia-flagged bulk carrier Minoan Courage, laden with 47,250 tonnes of urea, bound for India.
In all, 3,918 seafarers had been evacuated by shipping companies as of Monday. The government said it is coordinating with the Indian Navy and maintaining “continuous engagement” with seafarers’ families.
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How ships are slipping through Hormuz
Two distinct routes have emerged for vessels transiting the strait: a southern corridor hugging the Omani coastline, and the northern route through Iranian waters.
The US military and the United Nations’ International Maritime Organization (IMO) have tried to establish the southern route to keep shipping outside Iranian control. On the other side, Iran has sought to designate the northern route as the only sanctioned path, saying that transits require permission from an Iranian entity — a claim that Washington rejects.
Observable crossings of the southern corridor have “ground to a complete halt”, Bloomberg reported on Monday, with the last recorded passage on July 8, after a spate of Iranian attacks discouraged seafarers from using the route. But a handful of crossings were observed through the northern route since last Saturday, the report said.
Secret crossings of Hormuz – when ships switch off their transponders to avoid pinging their locations – became common in mid-April, when the UAE started moving its oil out of the Persian Gulf on tankers that had gone dark. The move partially explained why oil shortage during the war wasn’t as bad as had been anticipated in the early days of the conflict.
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Fragile truce collapses
The latest spiral marks the end of the ceasefire that came into effect in April and was extended by the interim peace deal agreed by the US and Iran last month.
The interim deal – or the memorandum of understanding (MoU) – had eased the US blockade of Iranian ports, originally announced by US President Donald Trump in April to punish Tehran for effectively choking the Strait of Hormuz after the war began.
As hostilities escalated, Iran said over the weekend it was closing the strait once again.
Trump responded by declaring the strait “OPEN, and will remain OPEN, with or without Iran” and announcing on Truth Social that the US was “reinstating the Iranian blockade” — targeting only Iran’s own ships and customers, he said, while “all other countries will have fair and open use of the strait”.
Soon after, the US President said American forces would now act as “the guardian of the Hormuz Strait” and be “reimbursed, at the rate of 20% on all cargo shipped” for providing security through the waterway.
“We’re going to get paid for guarding it,” he told Fox and Friends. “A lot of money, but we just want to be reimbursed for doing all of this, for putting our people in danger.”
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The proposal upends a policy of free navigation that the US Navy has enforced since the Barbary Wars and the War of 1812, Associated Press reported.
Before the war, around a fifth of the world’s oil and gas traffic passed through Hormuz daily — more than 15 million barrels worth at least $1.2 billion — meaning a 20% fee could generate roughly $240 million a day, according to a Reuters calculation. The IMO pushed back on the US’s assertion, saying it opposes fees on straits used for international navigation and that there is no legal basis for mandatory tolls.
Iran rejected the claim outright. Foreign minister Abbas Araghchi wrote on X that Tehran was the strait’s guardian and would remain so “forever”. He added, “20% is of course too much. We will be fair.”
Iran’s foreign ministry spokesperson Esmaeil Baqaei had said on Monday that the MoU was “in crisis” and that Tehran would abandon its obligations if Washington did the same — though talks with mediators from Qatar, Pakistan and Oman were continuing.
Bader Al-Saif, an associate fellow at Chatham House, said the escalating attacks would merely delay a permanent agreement. “Both sides want to end the impasse on their own terms, and they are increasingly finding it difficult to do so. Hence, the return to and increase in the scale of attacks,” he said.
