Huge blaze in Black Sea after naval drone hits oil tanker

An oil tanker off Russia’s Black Sea coast was struck by a naval drone, triggering a huge fire and black smoke clouds that blanketed parts of the resort city of Sochi, Russia’s transport ministry has said.It said a Liberian-flagged tanker had been attacked and that “crude oil is burning openly in the waters of the Black Sea”.“Firefighting efforts will begin once the fire’s intensity has subsided and rescue vessels can safely approach the tanker,” the ministry said.A crew of 23 – all Indian citizens – had been rescued, it added.READ MORERussia and Ukraine have targeted commercial shipping around the Black Sea since the conflict began, and Russia has recently attacked grain vessels carrying Ukrainian goods near the coast of Romania.Videos and photos circulated on social media from Sochi – a popular Black Sea resort city of almost 500,000 people – showed bright orange flames out at sea and a thick column of black smoke billowing into the sky.Elsewhere, rescue operations were under way off the coast of Bulgaria on Tuesday after drones hit two commercial ships, sinking one and setting the other ablaze, according to Bulgarian prime minister Rumen Radev.The attack – the first of its kind on vessels in Bulgarian waters – occurred at about 3am local time, Radev said. He said the ships had been struck by sea and aerial drones about 110km off the coast of Byala, eastern Bulgaria.Crew members from a vessel struck by drones in Bulgaria's exclusive economic zone arrive at the port of Varna after being rescued on Tuesday. Photograph: AFP via Getty Images Radev told reporters that it was not immediately clear where the drones had originated, but said he had no doubt they were “either Ukrainian or Russian”.Russia and Ukraine have traded strikes on ports and vessels in the Black Sea, making the shipping route there increasingly precarious.Speaking to reporters in Sofia, the capital, after an emergency cabinet meeting, Radev acknowledged that sailing in the Black Sea had become “increasingly difficult” and called the attack “absolutely unacceptable”.“It’s a flagrant violation of international law and maritime laws in general,” he said.A spokesperson for Nato, of which Bulgaria is a member, declined to comment on Tuesday and referred questions to Bulgarian authorities.Radev said one of the ships, which had been sailing under the flag of Togo, sank after being hit and that rescuers were searching for surviving crew members. It was not immediately clear how many sailors had been aboard that vessel or what it had been carrying.An injured crew member from a ship struck by drones in Bulgaria's exclusive economic zone is moved on a stretcher after he was rescued, at the Varna harbour on Tuesday. Photograph: AFP via Getty Images The other ship, which was sailing south with wheat on board, caught fire, and at least two of its sailors were wounded, Radev said. He added that the crew – which included 11 Turkish nationals and seven sailors from India – had been evacuated to a Bulgarian ship that witnessed the strikes.The strikes came a day after a Turkish cargo ship carrying Ukrainian corn caught fire and sank in the Black Sea off the coast of Romania, according to Romanian authorities.Romania’s interior ministry said in a statement that the two people had died and 11 people had been rescued in that incident, about 70m south of Sfantu Gheorghe, a coastal town.While Romanian authorities did not identify the cause of the fire, Ukrainian officials blamed Russian drones.Late on Tuesday, president Volodymyr Zelenskiy of Ukraine blamed Russia for the attack on Bulgaria, saying on social media, “Ukraine’s Defense Forces conducted no operations in this area of the sea, and this latest tragedy involving civilian vessels is another part of Russia’s effort to make the western Black Sea completely unfit for navigation.“We verified all the details with the Bulgarian side. Our Navy contacted its counterparts in Bulgaria, and it has been established that this was a combined Russian attack using maritime and aerial drones.”Russia has not publicly commented on what happened off the coasts of Romania or Bulgaria.Ukrainian and Russian forces have waged a long-running battle in the Black Sea and the adjacent Sea of Azov, disrupting grain exports from both countries that are critical to the world food supply.Ursula von der Leyen, president of the European Union’s executive branch, described recent strikes in the Black Sea as “increasingly concerning”.“Commercial ships – and innocent crews – are being targeted, with lives already lost at sea,” she wrote in a social media post on Tuesday. “While exact circumstances of these incidents are still being established, the developments are very concerning.” Russia launched a ‌barrage of drones and missiles at Ukraine on Wednesday, killing at least 11 people, injuring 34, and damaging residential buildings, industrial facilities and infrastructure, Ukrainian officials said.Two people were killed ​in the capital Kyiv, four in the northern city of Pryluki and two in the central Poltava region, authorities said.A car burns after a Russian strike on a bridge across Dnipro in Zaporizhzhia, Ukraine. Photograph: Ukrainian Emergency Service/AP “Ukraine has once again been hit by Russian missiles throughout the night,” Dmytro Lubinets, Ukraine’s parliamentary commissioner for human rights, said on the Telegram app.“Another sleepless night, another act of terror, after ​which people still have to plan their working day despite everything.” Russia launched 130 drones, 48 cruise missiles and also ballistic missiles to attack Ukraine, the Ukrainian air ⁠force said. Air defence units downed 161 targets, it said on Telegram.Kyiv and Poltava in central Ukraine, the southeastern ‌region of ‌Dnipropetrovsk ​and Kharkiv in the northeast were the focus of the Russian attacks, the Ukrainian air force said.Russia’s defence ministry said its forces had carried out a “massive strike” on military-industrial facilities in ⁠Kyiv and other Ukrainian regions, using high-precision land-, sea- ​and air-launched weapons, as well as drones.It said the targets included ​sites where Ukrainian defence company Fire Point manufactures and stores its Flamingo cruise missiles and medium- and long-range drones in Kyiv as well ‌as regions of Kyiv, Chernihiv, Kirovohrad, Dnipropetrovsk, Poltava and Kharkiv.Last ​week, Zelenskiy said Ukraine had fired its first domestically made ballistic missile in combat, produced by Fire Point.In an ⁠interview with Reuters last week, Zelenskiy said he expected the ⁠company to have a longer-range ​FP-9 missile ready by the autumn, which the company has said will be capable of reaching Moscow.Emergency services conduct search and rescue operations at the site of a Russian aerial strike at a residential building in Pryluki, Ukraine, on Wednesday. Photograph: Genya Savilov/AFP via Getty Images In Pryluki in the northern Chernihiv region, a Russian missile slammed into a five-storey residential building, regional authorities said. At least four people were killed and 20 more were wounded, while more residents could be buried under the rubble, local authorities said.Video images showed rescuers pulling people from beneath the wreckage.Many Kyiv residents took shelter in the city’s deep underground metro stations as warnings of the upcoming attacks were shared by Ukrainian officials and military intelligence.Several loud explosions ‌reverberated through the capital during the ⁠night, Reuters witnesses said.[ Russia tells WHO there are no plague cases in Siberian cityOpens in new window ]“The metro is better, because we live on the 9th floor of a high-rise, and it’s really scary when you’re on the 9th floor and missiles are flying at you,” Lesia, a 49-year-old Kyiv resident, ‌told Reuters.Ukrainian officials said Russian ballistic missiles targeted Kyiv in addition to the drones.Overnight air strikes on the ​southeastern city of Dnipro damaged an industrial facility, transport infrastructure in Zaporizhzhia and apartment buildings in Kremenchuk, regional officials said on Telegram.– This article originally appeared in The New York Times. Additional reporting: Reuters/Guardian