Five seafarers killed in Black Sea port strike
A merchant ship working cargo in the Odesa region was hit while discharging fertilisers
Five seafarers have been killed and 12 of their crewmates injured after a drone struck a merchant ship working cargo at a port in Ukraine's Odesa region, in one of the deadliest single strikes on commercial shipping in nearly four and a half years of full-scale war. The Togo-flagged general cargo ship was discharging mineral fertilisers when the vessel's superstructure was hit, sparking a fire, according to Ukrainian officials, who confirmed that all of the casualties were crew members and that several remained in hospital.
Port infrastructure and other civilian facilities were also damaged in the raid, the latest in a near-nightly barrage against the country's seaports. Days earlier, two people were killed when port facilities in the same region were struck, while a nearby port bore the brunt of massed strikes over the weekend that led the country's largest sunflower oil exporter to suspend operations at its export terminal, with tens of thousands of tonnes of wheat and sunflower oil blocked, spilled or degraded. Overnight strikes set fuel and oil tanks ablaze and damaged a truck depot, while air defences reported intercepting more than 100 drones and several ballistic missiles.
The mounting toll on merchant shipping drew a rebuke from the head of the international maritime regulator, who told the body's council that he deplored the series of attacks over the past week against civilian merchant ships operating in the Sea of Azov and the Black Sea. He warned that while international attention has fixed on the Strait of Hormuz following recent attacks there, seafarers elsewhere continue to face serious threats that endanger crews, disrupt supply chains and undermine the principles on which international shipping depends, adding that seafarers should never become casualties of conflicts to which they are not a party.
