Twenty four Indian seafarers were rescued from tanker Marivex, a ship sanctioned by the U.S. for Iran links, off the south-eastern coast of Oman on Monday (June 8, 2026), after a U.S. missile strike.

The sailors sent distress messages to a Forward Seamen’s Union of India (FSUI) office-bearer that the U.S. Navy had attacked the ship’s engine room. Audio messages purported to be from the seafarers to Manoj Yadav, general secretary of FSUI, received at 2 p.m. IST say: “This is Motor Tanker Marivex. Fire on board. Vessel is sinking. U.S. Navy attacked with missile our engine room. We have a hole at the bottom.”

U.S. Central Command (Centcom) said in a statement that “U.S. forces disabled (attacked) an unladen oil tanker in the Gulf of Oman, June 8, after the vessel violated the ongoing blockade against Iran by attempting to sail to an Iranian port. An F/A-18 Super Hornet from USS Abraham Lincoln (CVN 72) fired a precision munition into the ship’s engineering and steering spaces after the crew failed to comply with directions from U.S. forces. Marivex is no longer sailing to Iran.”

The Marivex crew’s distress message says that there was a U.S. warship nearby that was not helping, neither was there an immediate response from the Maritime Rescue Coordination Centre (MRCC). Video clips sent to Mr. Yadav show a seafarer from the ship pointing to a warship nearby.

SOS!: Oil tanker, with 24 Indian sailors, issues SOS call as it catches fire off Oman after it was hit by a U.S. missile

The audio messages say that the lifeboats on one side of the ship were also hit in the attack and the other side lifeboats were not accessible due to a fire that had broken out.

According to the Indian Coast Guard, MRCC Mumbai received information at around 2.20 p.m. on Monday (June 8, 2026) regarding a missile strike on the Palau-flagged tanker MT Marivex, which was anchored off Masirah, Oman. The alert was conveyed to MRCC Mumbai by a relative of one of the sailors onboard.

Following the distress information, MRCC Mumbai immediately established contact with the Oman Maritime Search and Rescue Centre (OMSC) and requested it to assume the role of Search Mission Coordinator while extending urgent assistance to the affected vessel and its crew.

Eventually, a rescue operation evacuated the 24 Indian seafarers, who had moved to the front-end of the ship since the back-end of the vessel was on fire, through helicopter. The seafarers are now on the Masirah Island in Oman, and safe, said Mr. Yadav. “All of them are in a state of shock and most of them have lost their mobile phones. They are expected to reach India in two days,” he said.

‘Tanker was empty’

Earlier, a statement from the Centre said a “fire incident was reported today aboard the vessel MT MARIVEX at approximately 13:30 hours off the coast of Oman.”

At a news briefing, Opesh Kumar Sharma, director at the Ministry of Ports, Shipping and Waterways, declined to comment on the cause of the fire. “The vessel has 24 Indian seafarers on board, all of whom are reported to be safe,” he said. He added the tanker was empty and located away from the Strait of Hormuz.

Marivex is a ship sanctioned by the U.S. government last December, as per shipping database Equasis.

Marivex was one of the few ships that exited the Strait of Hormuz on April 9 just when the ceasefire was declared. It had then carried oil from Bandar Abbas in Iran to Mangalore. At that time, there was a rush of Iran-linked ships exiting the Persian Gulf.

Since then, Marivex has been operating in the “conflict zone”, said Mr. Yadav. Its last port of call was Karwar in Karnataka and the vessel was bound for Duqm, Oman, as per tracker website marinetraffic.com.

The United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations Center has flagged the attack as a “suspicious activity”.

(With inputs from Saurabh Trivedi)