Eight sailors are missing after a fire on the chemical tanker "Wine Trader" in the Black Sea. The ship is about 13 nautical miles south-east of the Romanian town of Sulina, the Romanian Naval Authority (ANR) said. There were 12 people on board, and four of them are safe.
The ship sails under the flag of San Marino and is 118.02 metres long and 17 metres wide, according to a ship-tracking website. In its statement, ANR spells the name "Wide Trader".
The ship sent a distress call at about 07:00 on 15 October. An explosion in the superstructure set off a fire, which quickly spread.
The ANR maritime coordination centre began a search and rescue operation. ANR and Coast Guard rescue vessels were sent to the area, along with the rescue ship "Apollo" of the Romanian Agency for Saving Human Life at Sea. The General Aviation Inspectorate also sent a helicopter.
Rescuers are searching for survivors, while specialised vessels try to stabilise the stricken ship.
At 01:34 on the night of 14–15 October, a drone entered Romanian airspace over territorial waters south-east of Sulina. It stayed there for about a minute, the Defence Ministry said. A few hours earlier, something else had happened.
The Romanian army's radar system spotted a group of aerial targets near Snake Island. Allied military command ordered two Spanish F-18s, based at the 57th "Mihail Kogalniceanu" Air Base as part of NATO's enhanced air policing mission, to take off. The ministry also activated air policing procedures with two Romanian F-16s.
Soon after the drone entered the monitored zone, its radar signal vanished. By morning, the authorities had sent an RO-Alert message to people in the northern and eastern parts of Tulcea county.
The fire on the "Wine Trader" is the second incident off Sulina in the past 12 hours.