Six decades on, MV Dara’s bombing off Dubai remains an enduring horror

The MV Dara, a 120-meter, 5,000-ton ship was a familiar sight in Dubai and around the Gulf. (Shutterstock)
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Updated 09 April 2021
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Six decades on, MV Dara’s bombing off Dubai remains an enduring horror

  • A suitcase bomb explosion aboard the vessel off Dubai killed 238 people, most of them Arabs, Indians and Pakistanis
  • British investigators later concluded that an anti-tank mine caused the blast that destroyed the passenger ship

LONDON: During the night of April 8, 1961, 11-year-old Mohammed bin Rashid Al-Maktoum, the future ruler of Dubai, was awoken by the sound of a ferocious storm battering the royal palace.

As a child, he had heard the elders of his grandfather’s generation recall phenomenal storms of such savagery that they likened them to the Day of Judgement.

But, as Sheikh Mohammed wrote in his autobiography “My Story” in 2019, “I didn’t pay much heed to their prophetic, doom-laden words.”

That is until that April night in 1961 when “I found my bed in the middle of a full-blown storm, with windows slamming in the gale-force winds that were blowing through our family home … It seemed like the world was ending all around me, what some other cultures call the end of days.”

It was, he wrote, “the beginning of a seemingly endless night,” during which large numbers of his father’s subjects, many of them injured and rendered homeless by the storm, sought sanctuary at the palace.

Outside, Sheikh Mohammed recalled, “there was heavy destruction, with palm trees flying through the air like toys, many houses damaged or utterly destroyed, and fishing boats tossed into the streets of the city. Many families suffered death or injury that night.”

And then, just when it seemed that things could not get any worse, they did. Out on the storm-swept sea, dozens were losing their lives — not to nature’s fury, but at the hands of a ruthless human killer.

Dubai’s ruler Sheikh Rashid had organized men to go out into the streets to help where they could, and to help staff at Al-Maktoum Hospital cope with the waves of injured who were pouring in.

And then, recalled Sheikh Mohammed, “arrived news that froze my father where he stood. British soldiers rushed past the door, scarcely catching their breath. They shouted, ‘Your Highness! There’s a fire on the Dara!’ The world seemed to stand still.”

The MV Dara, a 120-meter, 5,000-ton ship was a familiar sight in Dubai and around the Gulf. Owned by the British India Steam Navigation Co., it was one of four similar ships that for the past decade or more had provided a regular service for cargo and passengers to and from Bombay (now Mumbai) via ports around the Gulf.




The Dara was one of four similar ships that for the past decade or more had provided a regular service for cargo and passengers to and from Bombay, now Mumbai. (File Photo)

The Dara had left Mumbai on March 23 and, after calling at Karachi, Muscat, Dubai, Doha, Bahrain, Kuwait, Khorramshahr, Abadan and Basra, had returned to Dubai on April 7. On board were around 560 passengers and 132 crew.

The ship was anchored off the creek, with small boats ferrying passengers and cargo to and from the shore, when in the afternoon the weather began to deteriorate rapidly.

At about 5:30 p.m., after the Dara was clipped by a nearby cargo ship that had dragged its anchor in the rising seas, Capt. Charles Elson made the decision to put out to sea and ride out the storm in the relative safety of open water.

It was a fateful decision for the approximately 128 dock workers, officials, tradesmen and friends of passengers who had come aboard in Dubai and were unable to disembark before the ship sailed away to weather the storm. In all, about 820 souls were on board that night.




The Dara had left Mumbai on March 23 and, after calling at Karachi, Muscat, Dubai, Doha, Bahrain, Kuwait, Khorramshahr, Abadan and Basra, had returned to Dubai on April 7, 1961. (File Photo)

After the storm began to ease at about 4 a.m. the next morning, the Dara started its return to Dubai. She never made it.

Forty-three minutes later, a terrific explosion in an alleyway on the portside upper deck shook the ship.

“This explosion was of considerable violence,” reported the official inquiry into the tragedy, carried out in London in March and April 1962.

“It blew a semi-circular hole about 6ft wide and 4ft high in the engine-room casing, which separated the engine room from this alleyway; a rather larger hole was blown in the bulkhead on the port side; in the deck above there was a hole about 4ft in diameter ... fire immediately broke out, there was heavy smoke; all electric power was cut off, the steering gear was put out of action and the pipes in the vicinity of the explosion were ruptured.”

Many passengers and even crew panicked, crowding into lifeboats “with a considerable quantity of luggage” even before the call came to abandon ship. Of the six lifeboats launched, two capsized with loss of life.

In “My Story,” Sheikh Mohammed painted a vivid picture of the horror that unfolded as nearby ships, Dubai fishermen and others rushed to the Dara’s aid.

“More than 800 passengers were on board the sinking ship,” he wrote. “The soldiers said that many were killed immediately, but more passengers were dying every minute as they crowded to escape — some crushed to death, others drowning in the raging waters.”

(Then) arrived news that froze my father where he stood. British soldiers rushed past the door, scarcely catching their breath. They shouted, ‘Your Highness! There’s a fire on the Dara!’ The world seemed to stand still.

Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al-Maktoum

Overloaded lifeboats “were capsizing in the middle of the sea and the strong winds were scattering the boats in all directions.”

At the palace, “we gathered our relatives and a large number of Dubai residents in our home. My father sent all our family, without exception, with lifeboats to try to save anyone they could. We were able to rescue about 500 people that night — a night I thought would never end; one of horror, violence and terrible human tragedy.”

The crippled, burnt-out Dara stayed afloat for two more days before finally capsizing and sinking as she was towed back to Dubai. Today, she lies on her side about 8 km offshore.




The Dubai Voluntary Diving Team has worked with the Department of Tourism and Archaeology in Umm Al Qaiwain over ten months to complete phase one of the excavation of the ship, Dara, by cleaning debris from the location where the ship sank. (Emirates News Agency)

In interviews with this writer a decade ago, survivors and relatives of those who had been on the ship told of the horror of that night.

John Soares, then a 23-year-old deputy purser from Goa, recalled being thrown by the blast from his cabin bunk on the main deck. “I found total confusion on the deck,” he said. “I could see a gaping hole with fire coming out of it.”

Even as he tried to get passengers to put on lifejackets, many leapt into the rough seas without them.

“They were not listening to anybody, they were in a world of their own,” he said. “It was terrible, total panic.”

Decades after the tragedy, he remained haunted by the events of that night — the sight of many of those who jumped breaking their necks upon impact with the water, and the horror of witnessing mothers desperate to save their babies from the flames engulfing the ship, instead throwing them to certain death in the sea.

Many people in the region remain affected by the tragedy. Raja Qaiser of Islamabad, born 12 years after the sinking, recalled how his family still mourned its “lost children” — the four sisters Latifa, 17, Shoib, 7, Jamela, 5 and Hafeza, 3 months — who died on the ship with their mother Maqsood.

As a child, Qaiser would often hear his father Raja, who was not on the ship and who died in 1987 aged 70, speaking of his lost children. Until the end of his life, “he believed they had survived. He would not let anyone cry.”




After the storm began to ease at about 4 a.m. the next morning, the Dara started its return to Dubai. She never made it. (File Photo)

After the tragedy, which affected so many families around the Gulf, the hunt began for what caused the blast.

In 1957, Britain had intervened in an increasingly bitter war between the sultan of Oman and rebel tribespeople. The conflict reached a turning point in 1959 when British special forces and RAF bombers delivered a series of decisive blows against the rebels, in what became known as the Jebel Akhdar War.

The uprising had been crushed, but for a while insurgents continued to plant landmines in Oman, hitting military and civilian vehicles.

In 1962, a special court convened in Britain under the terms of the 1894 Merchant Shipping Act considered the evidence for 15 days and concluded that an explosive — probably a landmine — had been “practically certainly, deliberately placed in the vessel by a person or persons unknown.”

Sir John Hobson, the solicitor general, told the inquiry that the explosion had been a “deliberate and wicked act” of sabotage, the work of Omani rebels.

The explosion, reported the inquiry, had caused “an instantaneous fire which spread with extreme rapidity.”

The deaths had resulted “partly from the explosion itself and partly from the extremely rapid spread of the fire, which asphyxiated an unknown number of persons and prevented the launching of the majority of the lifeboats.”

Evidence was given to the inquiry by British Royal Navy divers who had been sent down to examine the wreck of the Dara.

They had concluded that “there seemed little doubt that the explosion was caused by a high-explosive of approximately the type and quantity used in an anti-tank mine ... detonated deliberately, probably by a detonator with a time device.”

No group claimed responsibility for the blast and no one was ever charged with having carried it out, but numerous suspects were arrested and interrogated by the British.

Sir John de Silva, first secretary of the British Political Residency in Bahrain, told the inquiry that a prominent member of the rebel group had “admitted that the explosion had been caused by his colleagues.”

The unofficial conclusion reached was that the bomb had been intended to go off at Muscat in Oman, the Dara’s next scheduled port of call.

Hidden in a suitcase, the explosives may have been smuggled on board at Dubai by an insurgent or insurgents who had traveled overland to the port from Oman.

In a final twist of fate brought about by a storm of the type likened by the elders of Dubai to the Day of Judgement, the bomber may have been trapped on board when the Dara’s skipper raised anchor and sailed into open water to weather the storm. And, quite possibly, he was among the dead.

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Twitter: @JonathanGornall


UN chief calls for probe into deaths near Gaza aid site

Updated 02 June 2025
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UN chief calls for probe into deaths near Gaza aid site

  • Antonio Guterres says he is appalled by reports of Palestinians killed and injured while seeking aid
  • Israeli gunfire killed at least 31 people and wounded 176 near aid distribution site in the southern city of Rafah

GAZA: UN chief Antonio Guterres called Monday for an independent investigation into the killing of dozens of Palestinians near a US-backed aid center in Gaza after rescuers blamed the deaths on Israeli fire and the military denied any involvement.
Gaza’s civil defense agency said Israeli gunfire killed at least 31 people and wounded 176 near the aid distribution site in the southern city of Rafah, with AFP photos showing civilians at the scene carting away bodies and medics at nearby hospitals reporting a deluge of gunshot wound victims.
The Israeli military, however, denied its troops had fired on civilians in or around the center, and both it and the aid site’s administrator accused Hamas of sowing false rumors.
“I am appalled by the reports of Palestinians killed and injured while seeking aid in Gaza yesterday. It is unacceptable that Palestinians are risking their lives for food,” Guterres said in a statement, without assigning blame for the deaths.
“I call for an immediate and independent investigation into these events and for perpetrators to be held accountable.”
The Israeli government has cooperated with the group running the site, the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), to introduce a new mechanism for distributing aid in Gaza that has bypassed the longstanding UN-led system.
The UN has declined to work with the group out of concerns about its neutrality, with some aid agencies saying it appears designed to cater to Israeli military objectives.
An eyewitness from the scene in Rafah, Sameh Hamuda, 33, had told AFP he was headed toward the aid site amid a crowd of other Palestinians when “quadcopter drones opened fire on the people, and tanks started shooting.”
“Several people were killed right in front of me,” he said.
Another witness, Abdullah Barbakh, 58, also told AFP “the army opened fire from drones and tanks.”
Following the reports, the Israeli army said an initial inquiry found its troops “did not fire at civilians while they were near or within the humanitarian aid distribution site.”
Army spokesman Effie Defrin said in a video message that “Hamas is doing its best, its utmost, to stop us from” distributing aid, and vowed to “investigate each one of those allegations” against Israeli troops.
“I urge you not to believe every rumor spread by Hamas,” he added.
GHF also denied any deaths or injuries took place, adding that “these fake reports have been actively fomented by Hamas.”
Israel has come under increasing international pressure to improve the humanitarian situation in Gaza following a more than two-month blockade on aid that was only recently eased.
The UN has warned the entire population of the territory is facing the risk of famine.
It has also reported recent incidents of aid being looted, including by armed individuals.


Talks aimed at securing a ceasefire and the return of hostages taken by Hamas during its October 2023 attack that triggered the war have failed to produce a breakthrough.
Militants took 251 hostages during the attack, 57 of whom remain in Gaza, including 34 who the Israeli military says are dead.
After the two sides failed to agree on a new ceasefire proposal last week, Hamas said it was ready to “immediately begin a round of indirect negotiations to reach an agreement on the points of contention.”
Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz, meanwhile, said he had told the army “to continue forward in Gaza against all targets, regardless of any negotiations.”
Since a brief truce collapsed in March, Israel has intensified its operations to destroy Hamas.
On Monday, Gaza’s civil defense spokesman Mahmud Bassal said 14 people were killed in an Israeli strike on a house in Gaza, “including six children and three women, in addition to more than 20 missing individuals still under the rubble.”
“This house has been bombed before... and people were martyred previously,” resident Mousa Al-Bursh told AFP.
“The house primarily belongs to the Al-Bursh family, but it shelters many others, more than one family, and we don’t know the number of victims inside.”
The health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza says at least 4,201 people have been killed in the territory since Israel resumed its offensive on March 18, taking the war’s overall toll to 54,470, mostly civilians.
Hamas’s 2023 attack on Israel resulted in the deaths of 1,218 people, also mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official figures.


Nearly 41% of kidney patients died in Gaza as Israel destroys major dialysis center

Updated 02 June 2025
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Nearly 41% of kidney patients died in Gaza as Israel destroys major dialysis center

  • Israeli forces destroyed the Noura Al-Kaabi Dialysis Center in northern Gaza
  • The facility was damaged amid the war and remained standing among the heavily ruined area of Beit Lahiya

LONDON: Palestinian medical sources in the Gaza Strip revealed on Sunday that nearly half of the kidney failure patients in the coastal enclave have died since October 2023 amid ongoing Israeli attacks and restrictions on humanitarian and medical aid.

Israeli attacks on hospitals and medical facilities in Gaza barred 41 percent of kidney patients from accessing life-saving dialysis treatment, resulting in their deaths, according to the Wafa news agency.

On Saturday, Israeli forces destroyed the Noura Al-Kaabi Dialysis Center in northern Gaza, one of the few specialized facilities providing kidney dialysis to 160 patients.

Video footage appears to show Israeli military excavators completely demolishing the facility that was partly damaged amid the war and remained standing among the heavily ruined area of Beit Lahiya.

“The destruction of this center is a catastrophic blow to the health system,” a Palestinian medical source told Wafa, warning of dire consequences for the remaining kidney patients in Gaza.

“This is a disaster with consequences we cannot yet fully comprehend,” they added.


Israeli strike on Gaza kills 14 Palestinians, mostly women and children, hospitals say

Palestinians react at the site of an Israeli strike on a mosque, in Deir Al-Balah, in the central Gaza Strip, June 2, 2025.
Updated 02 June 2025
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Israeli strike on Gaza kills 14 Palestinians, mostly women and children, hospitals say

  • Shifa and Al-Ahli hospitals confirmed the toll from the strike in the built-up Jabaliya refugee camp in northern Gaza

DEIR AL-BALAH: An Israeli strike on a residential building in the Gaza Strip on Monday killed 14 people, mostly women and children, according to health officials.
The Shifa and Al-Ahli hospitals confirmed the toll from the strike in the built-up Jabaliya refugee camp in northern Gaza, saying five women and seven children were among those killed.
The Israeli military did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Israel says it only targets militants and tries to avoid harming civilians. It blames civilian deaths on Hamas because the militant group is entrenched in populated areas.
The Israel-Hamas war began when Palestinian militants stormed into Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, killing some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and abducting 251. Hamas is still holding 58 hostages, around a third of them believed to be alive, after most of the rest were released in ceasefire agreements or other deals.
Israel’s military campaign has killed over 54,000 Palestinians, mostly women and children, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry, which does not say how many of the dead were civilians or combatants. The offensive has destroyed vast areas of Gaza and displaced around 90 percent of the population.
Hamas has said it will only release the remaining hostages in return for more Palestinian prisoners, a lasting ceasefire and an Israeli pullout.
Israel has vowed to continue the war until all the hostages are returned, and Hamas is defeated or disarmed and sent into exile. It has said it will maintain control of Gaza indefinitely and facilitate what it refers to as the voluntary emigration of much of its population.
Palestinians and most of the international community have rejected the resettlement plans, viewing them as forcible expulsion.


Iraq probes fish die-off in southern marshes

Updated 02 June 2025
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Iraq probes fish die-off in southern marshes

NAJAF: Iraqi authorities on Monday launched a probe into a mass die-off of fish in the southern marshlands, the latest in a string of such events in recent years.
One possible cause for the localized die-off could be a shortage of oxygen sparked by low water flow, increased evaporation and rising temperatures fueled by climate change.
Another possible reason could be chemicals used by fishermen to make it easier to catch their prey, local officials and activists told AFP.
AFP images showed large quantities of silver fish floating in the marshlands of Ibn Najm near the southern city of Najaf.
Buffaloes could be seen surrounded by dead fish, trying to cool themselves off in the water.
“We have received several citizens’ complaints,” said chief environmental officer in Najaf, Jamal Abd Zeid, adding that a technical inspection team had been set up.
An AFP photographer at the site saw a team of civil servants collecting water from the marshland.
Among the issues the team was tasked with probing, Abd Zeid said, were a shortage of water, electrical fishing and the use by fishermen of “poisons.”
For at least five years, Iraq has been hit by successive droughts fueled by climate change.
Authorities also blame the construction of dams by neighboring Iran and Turkiye for the drastic drop in flow in Iraq’s rivers.
The destruction of Iraq’s natural environment is only the latest layer of suffering imposed on a country that has endured decades of war and political oppression.
“We need lab tests to determine the exact cause” of the fish die-off, said environmental activist Jassim Assadi.
A lack of oxygen caused by low water flow, heat, evaporation and wind were all possible reasons, he said.
He said agricultural pesticides could also have led to the mass die-off.
Probes into other similar events showed the use of poison in fishing led to mass deaths.
“It is dangerous for public health, as well as for the food chain,” Assadi said.
“Using poison today, then again in a month or two... It’s going to accumulate.”


Medical NGO blames new US aid group for deadly Gaza chaos

Updated 02 June 2025
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Medical NGO blames new US aid group for deadly Gaza chaos

  • Humanitarian aid must be provided only by humanitarian organizations who have the competence and determination to do it safely and effectively

RAFAH, Palestinian Territories: Medical charity Doctors Without Borders said Sunday that people it treated at a Gaza aid site run by a new US-backed organization reported being “shot from all sides” by Israeli forces.
The NGO, known by its French name MSF, blamed the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation’s aid distribution system for chaos at the scene in the southern Gaza town of Rafah.
Gaza’s civil defense agency said Israeli fire killed 31 Palestinians at the site. Witnesses told AFP the Israeli military had opened fire.
The GHF and Israeli authorities denied any such incident took place but MSF and other medics reported treating crowds of locals with gunshot wounds at the Nasser hospital in the nearby town of Khan Younis.
“Patients told MSF they were shot from all sides by drones, helicopters, boats, tanks and Israeli soldiers on the ground,” MSF said in a statement.
MSF emergency coordinator Claire Manera in the statement called the GHF’s system of aid delivery “dehumanizing, dangerous and severely ineffective.”
“It has resulted in deaths and injuries of civilians that could have been prevented. Humanitarian aid must be provided only by humanitarian organizations who have the competence and determination to do it safely and effectively.”
MSF communications officer Nour Alsaqa in the statement reported hospital corridors filled with patients, mostly men, with “visible gunshot wounds in their limbs.”
MSF quoted one injured man, Mansour Sami Abdi, as describing people fighting over just five pallets of aid.
“They told us to take food — then they fired from every direction,” he said. “This isn’t aid. It’s a lie.”
The Israeli military said an initial inquiry found its troops “did not fire at civilians while they were near or within the humanitarian aid distribution site.”
A GHF spokesperson said: “These fake reports have been actively fomented by Hamas,” the Islamic militant group that Israel has vowed to destroy in Gaza.