India registered a 'strong protest' with the United States on Thursday after confirming that three Indian mariners were killed when American forces fired on an oil tanker in the Gulf of Oman, the deadliest incident yet in Washington's effort to enforce a naval blockade on Iranian crude exports.
The Palau-flagged tanker Settebello was struck after it ignored repeated orders from US forces to halt, according to US Central Command, which said an American aircraft fired precision munitions into the vessel's engine room to disable it. The ship was carrying a crew of 28 — 24 Indian nationals and four foreign nationals — when it came under attack while attempting to transport oil from Iran in violation of the blockade.
India's shipping minister Sarbananda Sonowal said Thursday that the three seafarers, initially reported missing after the strike, had died and that their bodies had been identified. The deceased were named as Aditya Sharma, Shivanand Chaurasiya and Patnala Suresh. The surviving crew members were rescued from the disabled vessel.
India's External Affairs Ministry summoned a senior US diplomat in New Delhi to deliver the protest, an unusually sharp step between two governments that have spent recent years deepening defense and technology ties. The ministry said the safety of Indian seafarers, who make up one of the largest national contingents in the global merchant marine workforce, was a matter of direct national interest.
The Settebello is the second tanker with an Indian crew disabled by US forces this week, after another vessel was fired on in a similar interception a day earlier. US officials say the strikes are a last resort used only after ships refuse repeated instructions to stop, and have described the blockade as central to the campaign to cut off Iran's oil revenue.
The incident underscores the widening cost of the US-Iran confrontation for third countries. Roughly a fifth of the world's oil normally moves through the Strait of Hormuz and the adjacent Gulf of Oman, on ships crewed substantially by Indian, Filipino and other South and Southeast Asian seafarers.
New Delhi has so far avoided taking sides in the conflict, maintaining energy and trade relationships with both Washington and Tehran. The deaths are likely to intensify domestic pressure on the government to press for safeguards for civilian mariners caught in the enforcement zone.