Bulgaria ends search for missing crew after drone strike sinks cargo ship

Rescuers halt operation off the coast with no survivors found, following a Black Sea attack that also damaged a second vessel.Bulgarian authorities have ended search operations after confirming no survivors were found following a drone strike that sank a ship off the country’s coast.Drones hit two commercial vessels early on Tuesday as attacks on Black Sea shipping increase amid an intensifying Russia-Ukraine war. One caught fire, and the other sank.Recommended Stories list of 3 itemslist 1 of 3Three years of Israel’s mass dispossession of West Bank Palestinianslist 2 of 3‘We’re short of resources’: France’s student protesters, in their wordslist 3 of 3Fear and a far-right lurch: How October 7 reshaped Israelend of list“There is no trace of the sailors,” Rumen Nikolov, the head of the country’s Maritime Search and Rescue Coordination Centre, told reporters on Wednesday.The search stopped late on Tuesday and would not continue, he added.Eighteen Turkish and Indian crew members were rescued from the ship that caught fire, but the crew members from the vessel that sank remain missing.Authorities have not said how many people are missing, but according to the Maritime.bg specialised website, 10 people were on board the ship.Nikolov said the ⁠incident occurred in a so-called “responsible search and rescue zone” and not in the country’s territorial waters, which extend to 12 nautical miles off the coast.“What was found from the sunken ship was one overturned boat, three life rafts and debris from the ship’s equipment that was floating on the surface of the sea,” he said.Asked whether any debris from the drones had been recovered, Nikolov said: “I have no information about drone debris.”Prime Minister Rumen Radev has described the attack as “absolutely unacceptable”.European Union chief Ursula von der Leyen has also condemned the incident.Bulgarian authorities have said they are not yet able to determine the origin of the drones.