A search for the crew of a sunken merchant ship continued in the Black Sea on Tuesday after drones struck two commercial vessels inside Bulgaria's exclusive economic zone, in what shipping sources described as the first reported attack of its kind in Bulgarian waters. One vessel sank east of the Bulgarian coast, while the crew of a second ship was rescued after a fire forced them to abandon it.
Bulgarian officials said the two ships sent distress signals in the early hours of Tuesday. By mid-morning, one of them had vanished from Border Police radar. The incident has drawn a sharp response from Sofia and Brussels, and it follows a separate fatal attack on shipping off Romania a day earlier.
Two ships hit east of Byala
The attack happened at the exit of the Sulina Canal, east of Cape St. Atanas and roughly 70 to 80 miles off the town of Byala in the Varna district. Prime Minister Rumen Radev said both air and maritime drones were used, with the strikes reported at about 3 a.m. local time. Bulgarian rescue officials said distress signals followed at about 4 a.m., and that one vessel disappeared from radar at about 9 a.m. on October 6.
The vessels were named in maritime reports as the Togo-flagged general cargo ship Alfa Watan and the Palau-flagged Able. Bulgaria's Maritime Rescue Coordination Centre in Varna said each ship is about 25,000 gross tonnes. The Alfa Watan sank with its crew still missing. The Able caught fire and was abandoned.
Eighteen people from the second vessel were brought to safety. They were identified as 11 Turkish nationals and seven Indian nationals, with two of the rescued crew injured. Maritime reports said a passing ferry diverted to pick up the survivors before Bulgarian Border Police vessels took them towards Varna, where the injured received first aid. Aircraft were also sent to check for survivors and for any sign of oil pollution around the wreck area.
Blame not yet formally assigned
Radev condemned the strike as a gross violation of international law but did not publicly name who carried it out. He warned that the war risks widening if attacks on civilian vessels at sea continue. Russia had not commented publicly on the Bulgarian incident by the time of reporting.
A maritime security source cited in wire reporting said initial assessments pointed to a probable Russian attack, but that judgement remains unconfirmed while investigators establish the circumstances. European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said attacks on civilian shipping are unacceptable, noting that commercial crews have already lost their lives at sea and that the facts of the latest incidents are still being investigated.
That caution matters. The Black Sea has seen floating mines, repeated drone sightings and strikes on ports and shipping since Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. Each new incident now raises two questions at once: who fired, and whether Nato's south-eastern coastline is being drawn into a wider maritime campaign.
Second attack in two days
Tuesday's sinking came only a day after Romanian authorities reported that two people died in a fire aboard a commercial ship outside Romania's territorial waters. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy blamed Russian drones for that attack, an attribution Moscow did not immediately address in public. Geo Frontia covered that sinking separately on Monday; the Bulgarian case is distinct in place, in the vessels involved and in reaching Bulgarian waters for the first time.
For Ukraine, the pattern underscores why Kyiv treats the sea corridor as a front line in its own right. Grain and other cargo still have to move through waters exposed to drones, mines and long-range strikes. For Bulgaria, a Nato and EU member, the immediate task is practical rather than rhetorical: find the missing crew, secure the area against pollution, and establish exactly what struck two civilian ships in its economic zone.
Until those answers arrive, the safest conclusion is also the bleakest. Civilian shipping in the Black Sea is again being hit far from the land front, and the rescue off Byala shows how quickly a routine commercial voyage can turn into a search for survivors.
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