10 Crew Members Rescued from Sinking Vessel AS Dream off Cyprus

The general cargo vessel AS Dream suffered a hull breach and began taking on water and sinking on the night of October 30, approximately 90 nautical miles west of Paphos, Cyprus. The incident triggered an emergency rescue operation by Cypriot authorities, which succeeded in bringing all 10 crew members to safety.

The Joint Rescue Coordination Centre (JRCC) in Larnaca was alerted at 20:15 local time and deployed a helicopter, the patrol vessel Ammochostos, and the Port and Marine Police rescue boat Pentadaktylos. The Panama-flagged container ship MSC Hannah III, which was sailing in the area en route from Italy to Lebanon, also joined the operation. Under JRCC coordination, the MSC Hannah III rescued all 10 crew members, who were then transferred to the Pentadaktylos for transport to the port of Limassol, where they arrived in good health.

The AS Dream is a general cargo vessel built in 1980, flagged in Tanzania, with a length overall of 82 meters and a beam of 11 meters. Its crew consisted of nine Indian nationals and one Cameroonian national, according to Baird Maritime, which also reported that Turkish media identified the sunken vessel as the Antepli, owned by a Turkish company, and noted that the ship had previously been named Kıvanç, Susanna I and Susanna. The cause of the incident has not yet been determined by authorities.

According to Ports News Russia, the AS Dream had previously been at the center of a crew abandonment case in the port of Ashdod, Israel, dating back to September 1, 2025, which involved eight seafarers (two Azerbaijanis, one Georgian, three Indians and two Turks), with four months of unpaid wages and shortages of fuel and provisions. By December 2025, all eight crew members had either left the vessel or been repatriated, although three Indian seafarers initially remained in Israel due to a criminal investigation before also being repatriated and receiving their owed wages. Despite this, the case remains listed as unresolved in the ILO/IMO abandonment database.

Following the rescue, a navigational warning was issued identifying the AS Dream as an abandoned, semi-submerged and unlit vessel that was continuing to sink, with an empty lifeboat adrift nearby. Other vessels were advised to keep clear of the area.