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News · WorldThree sea drones sink a container ship off Bulgaria: all 18 crew members survive
The Contship Jet, sailing from Israel to Romania with 421 containers, sank near Varna after the attack. It is one more in a series of drone attacks on merchant ships in the Black Sea this month.
Translated from the original Spanish article. Read in Spanish
News published on October 30, 2026. The situation may have changed since then.
A container ship has sunk in the Black Sea, off the coast of Bulgaria, after being attacked by three sea drones. All 18 crew members survived.
What happened
The attack took place on Wednesday, October 28, around midday, about 17 nautical miles from Cape Kaliakra, in northeastern Bulgaria.
The ship, the Contship Jet, flying the Liberian flag, was left adrift and sank in the early hours of Thursday the 29th, about 36 miles from Varna.
It was sailing from Haifa (Israel) to Constanța (Romania) with 421 containers. It was chartered by the Israeli shipping line ZIM.
How the crew was saved
On board were 14 Filipinos and 4 Ukrainians. The crew abandoned ship about 12 minutes after the first alert.
Eight sailors boarded a military boat and another ten were rescued from a lifeboat. All of them reached Varna unhurt.
According to the Bulgarian Navy, a French patrol aircraft spotted the drones and raised the alarm. An hour passed between the warning and the attack, but there was not enough time to intercept them.
A sea drone is an uncrewed boat loaded with explosives that is steered remotely toward its target.
A string of attacks
This is not an isolated case. According to the EFE news agency, it is the fifth ship attacked off Bulgaria in October; four have sunk and 21 sailors are still missing.
No one has officially said who launched the drones.
Authorities are monitoring the coast for possible pollution. The ship was carrying diesel fuel, but the first assessment does not expect it to reach Bulgarian beaches.
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Sources (in Spanish)
- Ataque, hundimiento, tripulación y contexto: Última Hora / EFE (29 de octubre de 2026).
- Bandera, horario, rescate y riesgo ambiental: Container News (29 de octubre de 2026).
Photos are from Wikimedia Commons under free licenses; the author and license are shown under each image.
