New Delhi lodged a diplomatic protest with Washington after three Indian sailors were killed in a US military strike on a tanker in the Gulf of Oman.
Two other ships attacked by the US in the Gulf this week had Indian crew members on board — India supplies around 12% of the global merchant shipping workforce. “They are ordinary people, not trained for war,” an Indian maritime union leader told The New York Times, urging the government to “ask tough questions.”
But New Delhi appears “to have little appetite for a diplomatic confrontation,” the Financial Times wrote, as it races to finalize a trade deal with Washington, with whom relations have soured during the second Trump administration.