Sofia: Two more cargo vessels were struck by drones in the Black Sea off Bulgaria on Tuesday. One of them capsized, prompting emergency rescue operations, Bulgaria’s prime minister Rumen Radev said.
While 15 crew members from one ship, the Maltese-flagged Chelsea 3, were evacuated, only one seafarer from the other one has been rescued.
The possibility of Indian seafarers being on board the sunken ship can’t be ruled out.
Five of those rescued from the Chelsea 3 were being treated for minor injuries, Radev said in a video posted on social media.
The crew from the Maltese-flagged vessel included seven Ukrainian citizens and eight Azerbaijan citizens. The ship’s deck and hull were hit by three aerial drones, they said.
Only one crew member from the sunken vessel was rescued, Radev said, without providing details about the others on aboard. The strikes on the two ships occurred 18 and 17 miles (29 and 27.5 km) from the Bulgarian coast, as reported by News18.
The Bulgarian prime minister called the attacks “absolutely unacceptable” and said Bulgaria was seeking NATO and European Union assistance, during an emergency meeting of the country’s Security Council on Tuesday.
While authorities do not possess clear evidence on who was responsible for the drone attacks, “logic, as I have already stated, indicates that the result is in favour of the Russian Federation,” Radev said.
The attacks came exactly a week after sea and aerial drones attacked two other commercial vessels in Bulgaria’s exclusive economic zone in the Black Sea.
A Togo-flagged ship sank, while a Bulgarian ferry evacuated the 18-member crew from a Pulau-flagged vessel.
Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy said that his country’s military did not conduct any operations near the locations of last week’s drone strikes, pointed the finger at Russia.
A day earlier, a Turkish-owned cargo ship carrying corn caught fire following a drone attack and later sank in the Black Sea off the coast of Romania. Two people died and 11 crew members were rescued, Romanian authorities said.
Russia did not immediately comment on Tuesday’s incident.
Radev said he would summon the Russian ambassador to Bulgaria, Eleonora Mitrofanova, for a conversation.
