Bulgaria halts rescue operation for crew of sunken ship

By Alex Lefkowitz

SOFIA, Oct 7 (Reuters) – Bulgaria has halted its search for the missing crew of a ship that sank after being hit by a drone about 70 nautical miles (130 km) off its coast, Vice-Admiral Rumen Nikolov of the Maritime Administration Executive Agency said on Wednesday.

Early on Tuesday, two ships were hit in a drone attack in Bulgaria’s Black Sea exclusive economic zone. One sank and the other was damaged. The crew of the damaged ship were rescued, but the crew of the sunken one remain missing.

Nikolov said 12 crew members were believed to have been on board the ship which sank, all of them from Syria. The rescue operation will not resume, he added.

“There are no traces of the sailors from the first ship, and there will be none. There is also no information about drone remains,” he told reporters.

“A boat, three life rafts and parts of the ship’s equipment have been found.”

It was not immediately clear who carried out the attack involving air and sea drones in waters off the coastal town of Byala in eastern Bulgaria, but there are growing concerns about hybrid attacks by Russia as it wages war in Ukraine.

“If we look at the nature of the cargo and the direction in which the ships were moving, then logically speaking, the result argues in favour of Russia,” Prime Minister Rumen Radev said after a meeting of Bulgaria’s National Security Council on Wednesday.

“But that does not mean that we can claim that the strike was carried out by Russia without having evidence.”

In an emailed statement to Reuters, the Russian embassy in Sofia said the merchant ship was not among the targets hit by Russian drones on Tuesday.

Nikolov said the incident occurred in a so-called “responsible search and rescue zone” and not in Bulgaria’s territorial waters, which extend to 12 nautical miles off the coast.

In a separate incident, Romanian authorities said on Monday that two people had died in a fire on a ship in the Black Sea outside the country’s territorial waters.

SOFIA SEEKS CONSULTATIONS WITH BLACK SEA NEIGHBOURS

President Iliana Iotova said Bulgaria would invite its Black Sea neighbours Turkey and Romania for consultations on how to ensure safety for merchant shipping in the region.

Bulgaria may also ask its NATO allies to deploy “additional air and maritime surveillance capabilities and counter-drone systems to strengthen coastal and defence systems”, she said.

Bulgaria does not border Russia or Ukraine, but as a NATO member it holds a strategic position on the Black Sea, where both countries have major ports.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, speaking in a nightly video address, said an investigation jointly with Bulgaria’s navy had shown that Russia was behind the attack.

Radev denied on Wednesday any joint investigation with Ukraine.

He added that, following the attack, his government would approve the purchase of five more surface-to-air missile systems.

(Reporting by Alex Lefkowitz; Writing by Ivana Sekularac; Editing by Hugh Lawson and Gareth Jones)