‘Everything went black. Then fire poured down’: one man’s terror onboard a ship hit in the Iran war | US-Israel war on Iran

TThe explosion ripped through the engine room of tanker MKD Vyom without warning on the morning of March 1. “There were huge shock waves and a ball of fire,” said Basis*, a sailor on one of the first ships to suffer a fatal attack in the Gulf of Oman during US and Israeli airstrikes against Iran.

“For a second or two, I was stunned,” he said. “Everything went black. There was no electricity. I looked up: fire and thick black smoke were falling.”

Shocked by the explosion, he tried to understand what was happening, before realizing he had to run away – and quickly.

“The engine room had been destroyed. There were metal pipes, insulation blankets, tanks, torn out. A solid 2 cm thick fire door, glass windows – bang, everything was gone.”

“I said to myself, ‘I’m alive. I have to get out of here.'”

Basis’ extraordinary testimony to the Guardian details for the first time the terrifying experiences of sailors aboard ships at the center of the US-Israeli war against Iran.

He is “one of the lucky ones,” he says, having survived an incident from which not everyone came out alive.

The tanker MKD Vyom, flying the flag of the Marshall Islands, was bound for Ras Tanura in Saudi Arabia, from Amsterdam via the Strait of Hormuz. Amid the escalating conflict, the ship was ordered to stop, report anything suspicious and await further instructions, Basis said.

More than 100 miles from Iran, “very far” from the strait and with no ships nearby, no one was unduly concerned, he said.

At the time, Basis did not know that, two hours before the MKD Vyom was hit, another tanker, the Skylight, had been attacked, killing one sailor and leaving another missing.

He remembers that, although he was almost suffocated by the thick black smoke that burned his throat and lungs, his training and familiarity with the ship took effect. In the complete darkness, he managed to find the exit and the stairs and dragged himself to the bridge.

“Two or three times I was almost senseless from choking. But I thought, ‘If I collapse, I will die.’ God helped me, I believe, because I don’t know how I found the courage.

On deck, an eerie silence engulfs the ship.

“A ship in motion is alive, you feel it, there is always noise. But you could have heard a pin drop. It was very calm. The ocean was also calm, no wind.”

It was then that he learned that his “beloved colleague” and “good friend to everyone”, Dixit Solanki, 32, an oilman from Mumbai, India, was still missing, probably in the engine room, where the fire was still raging.

To find him on a ship without power and with a damaged engine, the crew of 21 people from Ukraine, India and Bangladesh had to fight the flames with only fire extinguishers and sand.

Some began lowering buckets over the side of the ship and into the sea, bringing up the seawater by hand, in an increasingly desperate attempt to control the fire.

It took four hours to extinguish the fire before rescue operations could begin. But despite all their efforts, it was already too late. Basis and another crew member found their colleague dead, lying under destroyed and twisted metal in the engine room.

“We did our best to recover his body, for us and for his family,” Basis says. But a second fire broke out and the fire began to spread via the rupture of the oil tanks.

With a cargo of 60,000 tonnes of gasoline on board, the situation had become critical.

“If the fire spread to the cargo side, we would all disappear,” he said. Shortly after, the captain gave the order to abandon ship.

“Leaving the ship, leaving a colleague behind, stuck in the engine room, was unbearable,” says Basis. “We used our training and fought the fire. But we felt like we had failed.”

On Thursday, Amratlal Gokal Solanki, 64, said his son Dixit was his “hero”.

The sailor was “calm, hardworking and a gentleman,” always ready to help others, “even if he was tired after long hours at sea,” his father said. “He was not just a sailor: he was a son, a protector and the heart of the family. His loss has left a void that can never truly be filled.”

Solanki, a retired seafarer, says governments and shipping companies must do more to protect the crews of ships passing through conflict zones: “No seafarer should have to fear losing their life simply for doing their job. »

The family of Ashish Kumar, from Bihar, who was the captain of the Skylight, which was hit hours before the Vyom, have not heard from him since before the attack, but refuse to believe he is dead.

Ansu Kumari, his wife, says she cannot accept his departure. “They go abroad to build a future. If something like this happens, families are destroyed. I have full confidence that he is stuck somewhere. He will definitely come back,” she says.

Since March 1, 10 sailors have been killed in the Strait of Hormuz and the region, in 32 attacks on ships. It is unusual for seafarers, who are often not unionized and fear being blacklisted by unscrupulous shipowners, to speak out.

After Basis and the crew were rescued by another ship, the ship’s management company arranged for them to be accommodated in Oman, where they received counseling and medical treatment. They were sent home on March 4.

Ten weeks after his ordeal, Basis emphasizes that he is speaking on his own behalf, not on behalf of his company or any other crew member, to highlight the plight of the 20,000 innocent sailors who remain stranded on around 800 ships in the Strait of Hormuz, unable to escape.

Other ships are anchored in neighboring ports. The waterway, which normally carries a fifth of the world’s daily oil and liquid gas supplies, has been virtually closed since the United States and Israel launched the first strikes against Iran on February 28.

Safe at home with his family, his thoughts often return to his fellow Gulf sailors, left at the mercy of a protracted geopolitical crisis that, despite a ceasefire, shows no signs of resolution any time soon.

“My fellow sailors are suffering,” he said. “They are trapped, worse than the prisoners, without communication, with little food and water. »

Echoing the words of UN Secretary-General António Guterres, who called for the implementation of a coordinated plan to evacuate sailors, Basis called on countries to sit down and figure out the best way to bring stranded sailors home.

“Now is the time for all member states in the maritime sector to do what they need to do to allow our sailors to escape the Strait of Hormuz,” says Basis. “These are the people who allowed the global economy to survive during the pandemic. They are innocent victims.”

Since the conflict began on February 28, the International Transport Workers’ Federation (ITF) has seen a 100-fold increase in the number of seafarers needing help, from 200 to 2,000 cases.

Mohamed Arrachedi, ITF flags of convenience coordinator for the Arab world and Iran, says he has 70 WhatsApp messages requiring immediate attention. Most want to be repatriated away from conflict zones, others are demanding unpaid wages, particularly in cases where they have been abandoned by shipowners, and still others are reporting food shortages. They are, he says, in increasing distress.

“When you talk to a 45-year-old man with a family and he’s in tears, saying ‘my life is in your hands,’ but you can’t promise any solutions, it’s a difficult situation,” Arrachedi says.

“The sailors are telling the world that our lives are in danger. They need protection. All governments must come together and find a solution,” he adds.

V Ships Asia, the management company of the MKD Vyom, says the incident unfortunately resulted in the death of a “much-loved crew member”.

* Name changed at the request of the person interviewed