{"id":475,"date":"2026-10-06T13:07:52","date_gmt":"2026-10-06T13:07:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bugleblast.com\/?p=475"},"modified":"2026-10-06T13:08:09","modified_gmt":"2026-10-06T13:08:09","slug":"black-sea-drones-sink-alfa-watan-bulgaria-economic-zone","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bugleblast.com\/?p=475","title":{"rendered":"DRONES SINK A CARGO SHIP OFF BULGARIA! | Sea and air drones hit two merchant ships 80 miles off a NATO coast at 3 a.m. \u2014 one went down with its crew still missing, and nobody is saying who launched them"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The Black Sea war just crashed into NATO\u2019s front yard. Bulgarian Prime Minister <strong>Rumen Radev<\/strong> said two commercial vessels were struck by drones Tuesday inside Bulgaria\u2019s Exclusive Economic Zone \u2014 the first attack on shipping in the NATO member\u2019s EEZ, the <a href=\"https:\/\/apnews.com\/article\/bulgaria-prime-minister-ships-drones-economic-zone-59f61af472f0379ebe7b1eb39b768c45\">Associated Press<\/a> reports via <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cbc.ca\/news\/world\/bulgaria-black-sea-drone-attacks-reported-9.7370638\">CBC<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Radev said sea and aerial drones hit the ships around <strong>3 a.m.<\/strong> local time, about <strong>80 miles (128 km)<\/strong> off the coast. The Togo-flagged <strong>Alfa Watan<\/strong> suffered critical structural damage and <strong>sank at the scene<\/strong>. The <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.co.uk\/news\/articles\/c8ly0v5r602eo\">BBC<\/a> says a nearby Bulgarian vessel found only an overturned boat, rafts and life jackets; the crew is missing and a search is under way.<\/p>\n<p>The second ship, the Palau-flagged <strong>Able<\/strong>, was carrying grain and caught fire. A Bulgarian ferry pulled all <strong>18 crew<\/strong> to safety \u2014 11 Turkish and seven Indian nationals \u2014 and two badly injured sailors were flown to a hospital in Varna. \u201cThis is an unacceptable attack in Bulgaria\u2019s exclusive economic zone. It is a blatant violation of international law and maritime law,\u201d Radev said.<\/p>\n<p>Who did it? Officially, nobody knows: the origin of the drones was not immediately established, NATO declined to comment, and the BBC says Moscow has not commented. But the timing is ugly \u2014 a day earlier a Turkish-owned cargo ship carrying corn caught fire after a drone attack and sank off Romania, killing two, in what Ukraine\u2019s Volodymyr Zelenskyy called \u201ca horrific strike by two Russian drones on a civilian vessel.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>And the bill lands on everyone. \u201cWhat is happening is seriously disrupting shipping in the Black Sea, driving up insurance costs even further and making shipping extremely difficult,\u201d Radev warned. EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen put it bluntly: \u201cAttacks on civilian shipping are unacceptable.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><strong>Sources:<\/strong> <a href=\"https:\/\/apnews.com\/article\/bulgaria-prime-minister-ships-drones-economic-zone-59f61af472f0379ebe7b1eb39b768c45\">Associated Press<\/a> \u00b7 <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cbc.ca\/news\/world\/bulgaria-black-sea-drone-attacks-reported-9.7370638\">CBC News (AP)<\/a> \u00b7 <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.co.uk\/news\/articles\/c8ly0v5r602eo\">BBC News<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Sea and air drones hit two merchant ships 80 miles off a NATO coast at 3 a.m. \u2014 one went down with its crew still missing, and nobody is saying who launched them<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":476,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-475","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/bugleblast.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/bb-black-sea-drones-1006.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bugleblast.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/475","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bugleblast.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bugleblast.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bugleblast.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bugleblast.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=475"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/bugleblast.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/475\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":477,"href":"https:\/\/bugleblast.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/475\/revisions\/477"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bugleblast.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/476"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bugleblast.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=475"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bugleblast.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=475"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bugleblast.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=475"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}