HANOI — Bangladeshi migrant worker Mohammad Abdullah Al Mamun died after a missile struck his workers' camp in Saudi Arabia on March 8, inflicting severe burns. His body arrived home in a coffin earlier this month.

Al Mamun had worked in Saudi Arabia for 15 years, sending money home to his family in one of the poorest areas of Bangladesh. He had met his 6-year-old son only once. This year, he planned to return permanently to build a larger house with his savings and spend time with his son.

On March 9, his family received phone calls saying he had been hurt. Video footage shot by another worker showed him sitting in the open badly burned and bleeding and crying out for help.

"He never imagined he would be hurt. That a missile would fall on him," said Maruf Hasain.

When the war began, Shahida Khatun urged Al Mamun to come home. He had been saving money since November, and in his last call home he promised his younger brother and sisters he would pay for their studies, build a larger house for his parents and return for good this spring. The family is now struggling to recover his wages and rebuild their lives without him. "There are no words to describe the agony," Khatun said.

More than two dozen foreign workers were killed across the Mideast after the United States and Israel went to war with Iran in February. Attacks killed at least 24 foreign workers in the Gulf and four in Israel as Iran and allied armed groups launched waves of missile and drone strikes, according to the Coalition for Labour Justice for Migrants in the Gulf. The count includes eight mariners killed at sea. The coalition says few migrant workers had access to bomb shelters and many were stranded by the conflict. In some countries, work permits are tied to a single employer, leaving workers effectively stranded, the coalition says.

Tens of millions of foreign workers have helped build the Gulf Arab states' modern oil-fueled economies, and migrant workers make up a majority of the population in many of those states. Westerners, Arabs and Indians dominate business and finance, while laborers from poor countries in Asia and Africa work long hours in scorching temperatures at oil facilities and construction sites often with few protections.

"It's a very precarious situation for migrant workers," said Udaya Wagle, a researcher of labor and migration at Northern Arizona University.

A ceasefire was announced in early April, but negotiations to end the war have repeatedly stalled. Iran has effectively blocked the Strait of Hormuz, a key waterway for global oil and gas, and says it will only reopen the strait if the war ends and the U.S. lifts its blockade. The spike in the price of gas, fertilizer and other goods has hit Asian countries particularly hard.