‘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

The 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.”