Cargo Ship Sinks, Crew Missing After Drone Strikes Hit Two Vessels in Bulgaria's Black Sea Zone

A cargo ship sank in the Black Sea early Tuesday, October 6, after drones struck it and a second vessel roughly 70 nautical miles (112 km) off the Bulgarian coastal town of Byala, according to Bulgarian Prime Minister Rumen Radev. The crew of the sunken ship remains missing.

The vessel that sank, the Togo-flagged Alfa Watan, was a Turkish-owned general cargo ship headed for the Romanian port of Sulina, according to ship-tracking site VesselFinder. Its cargo and crew size have not been disclosed. A Bulgarian ferry, the Dioscuria, reached the scene after spotting an explosion but found only an overturned lifeboat and life jackets, Radev said.

The second ship, the Palau-flagged Able, was carrying wheat and caught fire after being hit, Radev said. All 18 crew members, 11 Turkish and 7 Indian nationals, abandoned ship and were rescued by the Dioscuria. Two were injured, one with burns and one with a head injury, Bulgarian Defense Minister Dimitar Stoyanov said according to local outlet Nova Varna. A navy boat carried the injured to Varna for military medical treatment, while a Border Police patrol boat brought the rest ashore. Stoyanov said two helicopters and a Su-25 aircraft were deployed for reconnaissance over the search area.

Both ships sent distress signals during the night, and one disappeared from Border Police radar around 9 a.m. local time, public broadcaster BNR reported. Bulgarian shipping outlet Maritime.bg and Euronews both described it as the first drone attack to hit vessels inside Bulgaria's exclusive economic zone, a roughly 29,000-square-kilometer stretch of the Black Sea.

No official attribution yet

Radev did not name Russia as responsible. He called the strike "absolutely unacceptable" and "a flagrant violation of maritime law," tying it to the broader war in Ukraine: "If this war is not brought to an end in time, it will continue to expand its geographical scope and increase the risk of even a global conflict," he said. Russia has not commented on the incident.

Reuters reported that an unnamed maritime security source said initial assessments suggested the strike was probably Russian, but that remains an assessment from a single source, not a confirmed finding. Radev convened an emergency meeting in Sofia with the defense, interior, and transport ministries along with intelligence services.

The strike comes as part of escalating attacks on commercial shipping. One day earlier, on Monday, a Turkish-owned cargo ship carrying grain was struck and sank off Romania, killing two people, according to Romanian authorities. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky blamed Russian drones for that strike; Russia did not comment.

A separate strike also occurred Tuesday near Odesa. Oleh Kiper, head of Ukraine's Odesa Regional Military Administration, said on Telegram that a Russian drone hit a Marshall Islands-flagged vessel carrying rapeseed oil, setting its superstructure on fire. One crew member was killed and seven injured, Kiper said.

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen called the Black Sea situation "increasingly concerning" in a post on X, writing that "commercial ships and innocent crews are being targeted, with lives already lost at sea," while cautioning that "exact circumstances of these incidents are still being established." She said the EU stands "in full solidarity" with member states on its eastern flank.

The political backdrop in Sofia

The attack occurs at a sensitive moment for Bulgaria's government. Radev has been described as pro-Russian, and his cautious public language naming no specific culprit raises questions for voters, given that a NATO member's own economic zone was just hit.

A fair counterpoint is also worth stating: officials in an active search-and-rescue operation, with crew still unaccounted for and no forensic confirmation of the drones' origin, have obvious reasons to avoid premature blame regardless of political leaning. Jumping to conclusions before wreckage or drone debris is examined would be its own kind of irresponsibility.

Coverage of the story varied in tone. The UK's Express ran a live-blog headlined "WW3 fears explode," a framing far more alarmist than the sourcing supports, since no government or international body has confirmed who launched the drones. BBC, Euronews, and Reuters all stuck to what's verified: two ships hit, one sunk, 18 rescued, and a search for the missing crew of the Alfa Watan still underway as of Tuesday morning.

That search, run by Bulgaria's Maritime Rescue Coordination Centre, continues with no confirmed casualty count from the sunken vessel. Moscow has issued no statement on any of the three Black Sea shipping incidents reported since Monday.