Black Sea Drone Strikes Sink Cargo Ship, Leave 10 Sailors Missing Off Bulgaria

Bulgarian authorities called off the search for ten missing sailors on Tuesday evening after drones struck two commercial vessels in the country's Black Sea exclusive economic zone, one of the deadliest attacks on civilian shipping in the war-strained waterway this year. The strikes hit before dawn, around 3 a.m. local time, roughly 70 nautical miles east of the coastal town of Byala, far from Bulgarian territorial waters but inside the zone Sofia monitors for search-and-rescue. Euronews reported that both vessels sent distress signals within half an hour of each other, suggesting the two strikes were coordinated rather than coincidental.

The Togo-flagged, Turkish-owned freighter Alfa Watan, en route to the Romanian port of Sulina, sank after being hit; all ten crew aboard remain unaccounted for. A second ship, the Turkish-owned Able, was carrying wheat when a drone struck its stern, flooding the engine room and setting it ablaze. All 18 crew of the Able, 11 Turkish and seven Indian nationals, were pulled from the water, with two hospitalized for burns and a head injury. Rumen Nikolov, who leads Bulgaria's Maritime Search and Rescue Coordination Centre, said crews combed the area for hours before giving up: "There is no trace of the sailors."

Bulgarian Prime Minister Rumen Radev condemned the strikes without assigning blame, while President Iliana Iotova convened an emergency meeting of the national security council. "Such an attack within the Bulgarian exclusive economic zone is absolutely unacceptable," Radev said, warning that "unless the war in Ukraine is brought to an end, it will keep widening its reach." Al Jazeera reported that Bulgarian officials said they could not yet determine which side's drones were responsible.

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen called the attack on civilian shipping "unacceptable" and pledged the EU's "full solidarity with our member states on the eastern flank," according to Euronews. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy was less equivocal, blaming Moscow directly and describing it as "a horrific strike by two Russian drones on a civilian vessel." India and Azerbaijan, whose nationals were among the rescued and the missing, also condemned the attacks. The incident came a day after a separate Turkish-owned cargo ship carrying grain sank off Romania, killing two crew members in a strike Ukrainian officials likewise attributed to Russia.

The twin strikes underscore how exposed commercial shipping has become along NATO's eastern maritime flank, where Bulgaria, Romania and Turkey have all reported drone incursions and attacks on merchant vessels through 2026 as the Russia-Ukraine war grinds on. Ships transiting the western Black Sea now routinely carry grain, oil and other cargo through waters that are formally outside the conflict but increasingly within its reach, raising questions for the International Maritime Organization and flag states about how to protect crews who have no say in the war around them. Insurers and shipping lines are watching closely: repeated strikes on vessels with no direct connection to either belligerent could push up transit costs and further squeeze grain and energy exports moving through the western Black Sea corridor. For now, Bulgaria has launched a formal investigation into the strikes but has stopped short of naming a culprit, leaving both the fate of the ten missing sailors and the question of who fired on them unresolved.