By Alex Lefkowitz
SOFIA, Oct 6 (Reuters) - The crew of a merchant ship was missing on Tuesday after the vessel sank in the Black Sea off NATO member Bulgaria following a drone strike that Prime Minister Rumen Radev described as a gross violation of international law.
It was not immediately clear who carried out the attack by air and sea drones about 70 miles (112 km) off the coastal town of Byala in eastern Bulgaria, but there are growing concerns about hybrid attacks by Russia as it wages war in Ukraine.
Shipping sources said it appeared to be the first such attack in Bulgarian waters.
Two ships were hit in the attack, Radev said in a televised statement. The crew of one, which was carrying grain, was rescued, with two injured. The other, which sank, was a Togo-flagged ship whose cargo was not disclosed.
A search has been launched for the missing crew and for any signs of an environmental threat.
A maritime security source said initial assessments of the strike suggested it had probably been a Russian attack.
Radev did not say who was behind the attack but made a reference to Russia's war in Ukraine.
"If this war is not brought to an end in time, it will continue to expand its geographical scope and increase the risk of even a global conflict," he said.
"We are seeing the war intensify, with all the rules of international law now being violated, and civilian vessels being attacked at sea. This is absolutely unacceptable."
Russia did not immediately comment on the incident.
DISTRESS SIGNALS REPORTED
British maritime risk management group Vanguard said the attacks on Tuesday were on the Togo-flagged general cargo vessel ALFA WATAN and the Palau-flagged general cargo vessel ABLE, within Bulgaria’s economic zone.
Both vessels issued distress signals, with Bulgarian sources stating that they had been struck by drones, Vanguard wrote in a report.
The drone attack follows an incident in which Romanian authorities said on Monday two people had died in a fire on a ship in the Black Sea outside Romania's territorial waters.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy blamed Russian drones for the incident. Russian authorities issued no immediate comment on it.
Since Russia's invasion of Ukraine in 2022, European countries have reported Russian drones breaching their airspace multiple times and mines floating in the Black Sea across trade and energy routes.
(Reporting by Alex Lefkowitz and Ivana Sekularac, Editing by Edward McAllister and Timothy Heritage)
