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

In an exclusive interview, a seafarer describes the strike on the MKD Vyom in the Gulf of Oman that killed his friend and crewmate, Dixit Solanki

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he blast tore through the engine room of the tanker MKD Vyom without warning on the morning of 1 March. “There were immense shock waves and a fireball,” says Basis*, a seafarer on one of the first ships to suffer a fatal attack in the Gulf of Oman during the US and Israeli airstrikes against Iran.

“For one or two seconds, I was knocked out,” he says. “Everything went black. The power was gone. I looked up – fire and thick black smoke was pouring down.”

Shocked by the explosion, he tried to make sense of what was happening, before realising he needed to escape – and quickly.