‘Thought we’d never see our loved ones’

“A number of rocket strikes started to go off in the distance and they started to get closer until one hit our ship. The explosions continued to wreak havoc in the area long after the strike, which led us to believe that we might not make it, that we’d never get to see our loved ones ever again.”

These were the words of the 20-year-old Hossain Mohammad Rakib, youngest sailor of the Bangladeshi ship “Banglar Samriddhi”, as he shared his most terrifying experience on his first international voyage when he along with his crew was stranded in war-ravaged Ukraine.

The 28 surviving crew members of the Bangladesh Shipping Corporation (BSC) vessel returned home in Dhaka, from Bucharest, Romania, on Wednesday.

A Turkish Airlines flight carrying the sailors arrived at the Hazrat Shahjalal International Airport (HSIA) at 12:10pm.

After landing at the Dhaka airport Deck Cadet Rakib, along with his crew, were examined at a hospital in Uttara. Following his check-up, The Business Post got in touch with Rakib over the phone.

Speaking this reporter, Rakib said after graduating from the Bangladesh Marine Academy in 2020, he sailed for the first time on January 16, 2022.

He was born and raised in Chittagong’s Sandwip upazila, an ancient island settlement in the Bay of Bengal, where his ancestors had a histories in sea voyages.

However, he said that it was unlikely that any of his forefathers had the experience of being in the middle of a conflict zone during any of their voyages, as he did.

Earlier, Captain of MV Banglar Samriddhi GM Noor E Alam spoke to reporters at the Dhaka airport on behalf of his crew right after landing. 

“We’re all relieved to be back in good health and for this, we express our gratitude to Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, the Shipping Ministry, the Foreign Affairs Ministry, and the Bangladesh Shipping Corporation,” he said.

The captain also thanked the Bangladesh embassies in Poland, Romania, and Austria for coordinating the evacuation process.

“We couldn’t have imagined whether we’d be able to return home so quickly,” he added.

“I express my deepest condolences to bereaved families of our colleague and third engineer Hadisur Rahman,” he also added.

The body of the ship’s third engineer Hadisur Rahman, who was killed during the rocket attack, remains preserved in a bunker near Ukraine and it will be brought back at a convenient time, says an official of the BSC.

As the situation in Ukraine is worsening the procedure to bring back Hadisur’s body is being delayed, the source adds. The BSC ship became stranded in Ukraine as the Russian invasion started soon after it anchored at Olvia port on February 23.

The ship had been declared abandoned after it came under rocket attack that killed one of its crew members.