SOFIA, Bulgaria (AP) — Three maritime drones struck a container ship sailing in the Black Sea off the Bulgarian coast on Wednesday, the country’s defense minister said, the latest in a series of series of such incidents on NATO’s eastern flank.
The attack on the Liberian-flagged container ship Contship Jet occurred shortly before 1 p.m. local time, about 21 nautical miles southeast of the coastal town of Shabla, near Cape Kaliakra in northeastern Bulgaria, Defense Minister Dimitar Stoyanov told reporters.
The crew evacuated the ship and were eventually taken aboard rescue ships of the Bulgarian navy and border police, according to the official BTA news agency. The rescued sailors – 14 Filipinos and four Ukrainians – were being transported to the port city of Varna for medical checks.
The ship was en route from the Israeli port of Haifa to Constanța in Romania. It was not immediately clear what the 421 containers on board were carrying.
The incident took place as defense ministers from Bulgaria, Romania and Turkey met in the Bulgarian capital, Sofia, for trilateral negotiations focused on security in the Black Sea region.
In a statement following the negotiations, the three NATO countries strongly condemned drone attacks against commercial ships in the Black Sea and called for “an immediate cessation of attacks that threaten commercial ships, maritime infrastructure and the security of maritime activities.” They also agreed on enhanced intelligence sharing, early warning capabilities and coordination in the Black Sea.
A series of drone attacks have taken place this month off the coasts of NATO members Romania and Bulgaria, leading some members of the alliance to wonder whether Russian President Vladimir Putin is seeking to test their support for Ukraine. in his war against the large-scale invasion of Moscow.
Russia has not taken responsibility for these attacks, but suspicion falls on Moscow. Bulgarian Prime Minister Rumen Radev told his country’s parliament earlier this month that “the logic goes in this direction… The problem is that we cannot prove it.”
On October 15, NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte said in an article on
The attacks in Bulgaria and Romania’s exclusive economic zones threaten a global shipping route and have left two people dead and at least 25 people still missing.
Throughout the war, Russia repeatedly bombed Ukraine’s Black Sea and Danube ports, leaving kyiv increasingly dependent on alternative routes to move its grain exports to markets in Africa and the Middle East. Russian drones have repeatedly violated Romanian airspace near some Ukrainian Danube ports.
In early October, two commercial ships were attacked in the Bulgarian exclusive economic zone, and a week later the Guinea-Bissau-flagged ship The HS Dignity sank after being struck about 17 nautical miles east of Shabla, while the Maltese-flagged Chelsea 3 was damaged in a separate attack about 17 nautical miles east of Byala, according to reports at the time.
On October 23, a foreign-flagged cargo ship capsized and sank in the Black Sea following a suspected drone strike about 13 nautical miles off the Romanian port city of Constanta.
Gn world
