Shipbucket

I have a question that has been piqued recently that I figured some people here would know the answer to.

During armed conflicts, various merchant ships seem to sink in relatively large numbers, or at least be struck my weapons of serious scale, and usually of ships not flagged to either side.

Is this an issue with identification? Do the merchant ships not have their trackers turned on? Accidents? How does a ship (such as the Bangladesh ship mentioned in the situation in Ukraine discussion) with no sides get hit by a missile?
Mines, I can understand (within reason), but I just dont seem to understand the widespread sinking of flagged merchant ships of other nations through various conflicts currently happening.

Ships are rarely flagged in their country of origin for economic reasons; tax havens and such. Crews are also almost never tied to the nation it's flagged in or operates from/to or even company that owns them. With modern merchant shipping it is where it goes and what it carries that matters, and the company owning them. As the Iran-Iraq war showed after a while no-one cares what they hit, as long as they hit something important.

There's a reason why NOTAMs and danger area warnings are issued in active war zones: Missiles fired may lock onto targets that match target parameters, i.e. big heat or radar signatures, and thus merchant ships can relatively easily be confused with a warship; naval minefields may not necessarily be made up of the relatively expensive "smart" mines that go after specific engine signatures but rather be made up of inexpensive magnetic or contact mines; or the forces in the area may simply attack anything moving into or out from their enemies' ports/waters in an attempt to strangle their enemies' economies and prevent resupply in an effort to shorten the conflict.

Simply put, it's bloody dangerous to venture into an active war zone.