Two tankers ablaze in Romanian waters after drone strikes, president says
Romania's president says two drones hit ships that caught fire inside the country's territorial waters, days after a separate sinking outside them.
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Romania's president said two air drones struck ships that caught fire in Romanian territorial waters on Wednesday. The vessels were identified by Reuters as the Comoros-flagged tanker Yara J and the San Marino-flagged tanker Wine Trader.
The Yara J was anchored eight to ten nautical miles southeast of the Sulina canal when it was hit, according to Reuters. All crew aboard were safe and put out the fire themselves. On the Wine Trader, eight of twelve crew were reported missing and four were safe, Reuters reported via Aaj English. A search-and-rescue operation involving a vessel and a helicopter was underway for the missing crew, the Romanian Naval Authority said, according to UNN.
Romania's Defence Minister Radu Miruta said multiple drones crossed into Romanian airspace near the border with Ukraine on Wednesday, but that radar systems did not show any drone heading toward the Yara J, Reuters reported. Romanian authorities stopped short of explicitly linking the fires to Russian drones.
The strikes follow a sinking on October 5 that killed two people and left 11 rescued, which occurred outside Romania's territorial waters and which Ukraine blamed on Russian drones, according to Al Jazeera and Reuters. Five commercial ships have now been hit in the Black Sea off Romania and Bulgaria since early October, with about 23 sailors dead or missing, Cyprus Mail reported. A similar attack on October 6 struck two ships in Bulgarian waters, sinking one; Bulgaria's prime minister, Rumen Radev, said there was no clear evidence of who was responsible but that the outcome benefited Russia, and that Bulgaria would summon the Russian ambassador.
If the Wednesday strikes are confirmed as hostile acts rather than accidents, the incident would mark a shift from the earlier sinking outside territorial waters to an apparent attack within them, testing how Romania and its NATO allies respond under the alliance's collective defence posture. Who launched the drones and why remains unclear, leaving room for further escalation in a Black Sea shipping and insurance environment already unsettled by the earlier losses.