Born to landless Indian farmers, Sunil Pooniya thought a job at sea would be his ticket out of poverty. Instead, his first voyage saw him diving into the ocean to escape a deadly attack driven by the Iran war, AFP reports.

The attack on Pooniya’s ship killed two fellow Indians — the country’s sailors are among the highest merchant maritime casualties from the Middle East war.

“There was a huge noise and the whole ship shook,” Pooniya recalled.

“I thought something had gone wrong with the engine, but a missile had hit us,” Pooniya added, who had been on the Palau-flagged MV Skylight.

“The whole ship was up in flames.”

“Everyone jumped into the sea wearing life jackets,” Pooniya told AFP, now back home in India.