India, March 14 -- For Kumkum Sinha (50), the wife of marine engineer Deonandan Prasad Singh (55), life has long been measured in departures and returns. Over more than three decades of her husband's career at sea, she has grown used to the rhythm of months-long voyages, brief homecomings and the reassuring phone calls that bridged the distance between the ocean and home.

But never, she says, had she imagined that the sea would bring such news.

Singh, an additional chief engineer aboard the Marshall Islands-flagged oil tanker Safesea Vishnu, was killed earlier this week when the vessel was hit near Iraq's southern port city of Basra. The tanker had departed from the Basra oil terminal carrying petroleum cargo and was scheduled to sail t...