Drone Attack Sinks One Ship, Leaves Another Ablaze off Bulgaria

Two merchant vessels, the Alfa Watan and the Able, were attacked by drones on October 6 within Bulgaria's Exclusive Economic Zone in the Black Sea. The Alfa Watan suffered critical structural damage and sank at the scene, with its crew missing, while the Able caught fire and its 18 crew members were forced to abandon ship; they were rescued, with two injured.

The Alfa Watan, flying the flag of Togo, was sailing toward Sulina, Romania, when it was attacked near the exit of the Sulina Canal, according to Bulgarian Prime Minister Rumen Radev. The Able, flying the flag of Palau and carrying a cargo of wheat, was sailing about eight kilometers to the south when a sea drone struck its stern, flooding the engine room and triggering a fire; its 18 crew members, 11 Turkish and 7 Indian, were rescued by the Bulgarian ferry Dioscuria and taken to Varna, where two of them received treatment for burns and a head injury.

Bulgarian authorities deployed helicopters to transport rescue teams and used a Su-25 aircraft for aerial reconnaissance of the area. Search teams found three life rafts, an overturned lifeboat, and life jackets, but found no trace of the Alfa Watan's crew. According to Rumen Nikolov, head of rescue operations for the Bulgarian Maritime Administration, the search was called off at 5 p.m. local time on Tuesday after it was deemed unlikely that the sailors would be found.

The attack came amid an escalation of incidents in the western Black Sea: according to maritime security firm Ambrey, three merchant vessels were attacked in the exclusive economic zones of Romania and Bulgaria within just 24 hours, between October 5 and 6, and two of them sank. All were trading with Danube ports, and Ambrey assessed it as highly likely that Russian forces were behind the attacks, describing the incident as a significant escalation, as merchant vessels were now exposed to kinetic activity within the EEZs of two NATO members.

One day earlier, the general cargo ship Royal Mammadov had sunk off Romania following a suspected Russian drone attack that killed two sailors, and hours after the attack on the vessels off Bulgaria, the Aframax-class tanker Rio caught fire off Sochi, Russia, after being struck by unmanned surface vehicles, though in that case all 23 crew members were rescued unharmed.