Update: Indian Coast Guard tackles inferno on damaged container ship, four crew missing

Indian emergency response and fire-fighting ships are attempting to extinguish a huge fire which is tearing through cargo and structures on a container ship adrift in the Arabian Sea.

On 12 June 2025, the fire on Singapore‑flagged container ship Wan Hai 503 appeared out of control with more than half of the containers damaged or still burning and much of the 2005-built ship severely damaged.

Wan Hai 503 has started listing from the displacement of cargo and weight of water, according to images and video published by the Indian Coast Guard on social media. With this amount of damage, the 42,532-gt ship is at risk of sinking before the blaze is extinguished.

On 9 June 2025, the Indian Coast Guard and Indian Navy mobilised rapidly to rescue seafarers from this burning container ship that was sailing from Colombo, Sri Lanka to Mumbai, India.

Explosions and a fire broke out on Singapore‑flagged container ship Wan Hai 503 as it sailed in the Arabian Sea, off India’s southern state of Kerala.

According to automatic identification system (AIS) information, this 269-m ship, with a beam of 32 m, left Colombo on 7 June and was en route to Nhava Sheva, due 10 June.

Explosions were reported from below deck and a fire erupted from containers in the cargo hold and spread to other containers when the ship was 240 km west of Beypore. This prompted a large-scale rescue operation as crew members abandoned the burning ship into liferafts.

According to local reports, 18 seafarers from a crew of 22 were rescued with four still missing from the container ship.

From Indian Coast Guard images and video, several containers were damaged or lost overboard while others are burning, with the main fire out of control.

This accident occurred just two weeks after Liberia-flagged container ship MSC Elsa 3 listed then sank off India, with all 24 crew members rescued.

According to the Indian Coast Guard, that ship was carrying 640 containers, including 13 containing hazardous cargo and 12 with calcium carbide, a substance that, according to a US health department fact sheet, reacts with water to produce a hazardous gas. The vessel had 84 tonnes of diesel and 367 tonnes of furnace oil in its tanks.

The coastguard said its teams and volunteers were cleaning beaches where cargo, including plastics, had washed up from the sunken MSC Elsa 3.