Two tankers catch fire off Romania’s coast amid a wave of deadly drone attacks on Black Sea shipping. More than half a dozen sailors are missing.
Rescuers are searching for seven sailors missing after a fire aboard a tanker in Romania’s territorial waters in the Black Sea, Reuters reported.
The San Marino-flagged Wine Trader sent a distress signal at about 7 a.m. on October 15. Of the 12 people aboard, four were rescued and seven remain missing.
That same night, another vessel, the Comoros-flagged chemical tanker Yara J, caught fire in the Black Sea. No one was injured, and the crew managed to put out the fire on its own.
Both ships were anchored off Romania’s coast when the fires broke out, Reuters reported. Local authorities, however, have not yet linked the fires to a Russian drone attack.
At least five other cargo ships have come under drone attack off the coasts of Romania and Bulgaria over the past 10 days, according to Reuters. All those attacks took place outside NATO territorial waters and killed 23 sailors.
At Meduza, we are committed to transparency about our use of artificial intelligence in the newsroom. The story you’re reading was written by one of our living, breathing journalists and translated from Russian using an AI model configured to follow our strict editorial standards. This translation process is the result of extensive testing and refinements to ensure our English-language coverage is timely and accurate. A Meduza editor reviews every draft before publication.
If you find any errors in this translation, please contact us at [email protected].
To read Meduza’s exclusive content in English, please subscribe to our newsletter.