SOFIA, Oct 7 (Reuters) – Bulgaria has halted its search for the missing crew of a ship that sank after being hit by a drone on Tuesday about 70 nautical miles (130 km) off its coast, Vice-Admiral Rumen Nikolov of the Maritime Administration Executive Agency told Nova TV 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 the rescue operation for the crew of the sunken ship would not resume on Wednesday.
“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 said on a Nova TV morning show.
“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.
Nikolov said the incident occurred in a so-called “responsible search and rescue zone” and not in the country’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.
Bulgarian Prime Minister Rumen Radev said on Tuesday that it was unclear whether the drones came from Russia or from Ukraine, the BTA news agency reported. Bulgaria does not border either country, but as a NATO member it holds a strategic position on the Black Sea, where both Ukraine and Russia 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 said on Wednesday 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)
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