sinks

At least 11 people believed to still be missing, with rescue operations underway.

The US coastguard has said it rescued 16 people from the Pacific Ocean after a boat sank off Mexico’s Baja coast.

The coastguard said on Friday it responded to a Mayday call reporting that a boat was sinking. The search is ongoing for 11 people believed to be still missing.

The boat went down about 225km (140 miles) west of Ensenada, Mexico.

A rescue helicopter reached the site about two hours after someone on the boat transmitted the Mayday call at about 1am (08:00 GMT) on Friday, said coastguard Lieutenant Santiago Tamburini.

It took about 90 minutes for the coastguard crew, which included a rescue swimmer, to pull the 16 people from the water, Tamburini said.

The people rescued were Mexican nationals, according to the Mexican consulate.

One survivor was being treated for a suspected shark bite and two were in critical condition, authorities said.

The rescued were flown by helicopter to San Diego, California, and transported to hospitals. The Mexican consulate in San Diego said it offered consular assistance.

The coastguard and US Navy are continuing to search the area with two helicopters, a fixed-wing plane, a cutter and a navy combat ship.

The boat sank in an area frequented by smugglers transporting migrants to the US. It is also popular with fishing and leisure boats.

Details about the boat’s origin, destination and what it was doing are not clear. No vessel, only debris, was found, and it was unclear what type of boat was involved, the coastguard said.

“Boats in that area can be for fishing, leisure, personal recreation. We just don’t know what they were doing out there. We all know it’s a suspected smuggling route,” Tamburini said.

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.

“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.

A distress beacon signal from the ship that sank was received at 2:54am on Tuesday (23:54 GMT on Monday), while the distress signal from the other ship was received at 3:23am (00:23 GMT), Nikolov said.

Both commercial ships were managed by Turkiye-based companies, according to the Equasis merchant shipping database.

They were hit about 80 nautical miles (150km) east of the Bulgarian coastal town of Byala.

The strikes came a day after another ship caught fire and sank off the Romanian coast on Monday, killing two people. Ukraine blamed Russia for the drone attack.

The incident is the latest suspected Russian drone incursion, as fears grow that the war in Ukraine could spill over.

Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has blamed a Russian drone attack for the sinking of a ship in Romania’s section of the Black Sea.

Romania reported that two people were killed and 11 rescued when a grain ship caught fire and sank in its waters on Monday. The Ukrainian president’s claim suggests the incident is the latest in a series of suspected incursions along NATO’s eastern flank, and will fuel concerns that Moscow’s war in Ukraine could spill over.

“A horrific strike by two Russian drones on a civilian vessel in neutral waters carrying corn and owned by Turkiye,” Zelenskyy wrote on social media.

According to the Romanian Ministry of Internal Affairs, the coastguard was alerted at about 11am local time (08:00 GMT) that a fire had broken out on the ship, adding that it was in the country’s “exclusive economic zone”.

The ministry did not identify the cause of the fire.

Azerbaijani and Indian citizens were on board the ship at the time of the attack, it is reported.

Romania is among several NATO members to have reported incursions this year, as Russia and Ukraine have increasingly turned to launches of hundreds of drones and missiles.

In May, a Russian drone hit an apartment building. In June, a stray Ukrainian maritime drone exploded in the Black Sea port of Constanta. In July, Bucharest summoned Russia’s ambassador after air defences intercepted three drones within the span of one week.

Incursions by Russian drones into eastern European airspace are seen by some as a test of NATO and the European Union’s defences and response capabilities.

The Baltic states have also seen drones enter their airspace throughout the war, with airspace violations contributing to the collapse of Latvia’s government in late May after a dispute over how to respond to the incursions.

The incursions have also prompted Poland to bolster its air defence posture after accusing Moscow of violating its airspace in September. Suspected drones were shot down twice in Moldova.

Romania’s Ministry of National Defence said the Romanian Naval Forces had destroyed nine drifting sea mines in the Black Sea since the start of the war.