Bulgarian authorities say sea and aerial drones struck two commercial vessels on 6 October. One ship sank and another crew was rescued, while responsibility for the attack remains under investigation.
Bulgarian authorities say sea and aerial drones attacked two merchant ships at about 03:00 on 6 October, roughly 70 nautical miles east of the coastal town of Byala and inside Bulgaria’s exclusive economic zone. The Togo-flagged general cargo vessel Alfa Watan suffered critical damage and sank. Its crew remained unaccounted for in the latest Bulgarian News Agency update reviewed early on 7 October.
The Palau-flagged Able caught fire after being hit. A Bulgarian-flagged ferry, Dioscuria, diverted to assist and rescued all 18 people aboard; two were reported seriously injured. Bulgaria launched an air-and-sea search for Alfa Watan’s crew and began monitoring the area for possible pollution.
Prime Minister Rumen Radev said the attack involved both naval and aerial drones but did not identify who operated them. Bulgaria’s Chief of Defence said investigators would need wreckage to determine the drone types. Those statements establish the Bulgarian government’s account of the incident, not responsibility for it.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy attributed the attack to Russia and said Ukrainian forces had not been operating in that part of the sea. Reuters reported that Moscow had not commented. DWN cannot independently confirm Ukraine’s attribution, and Bulgaria had not announced a finding on responsibility in the sources reviewed.
Reuters and Associated Press described this as the first reported drone attack on shipping in Bulgaria’s exclusive economic zone. That phrase should not be confused with territorial waters. Under the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, an exclusive economic zone lies beyond and adjacent to the territorial sea; the coastal state has defined resource and environmental rights there, while other states retain navigation and overflight freedoms subject to the convention.
The distinction does not reduce the seriousness of an attack on commercial shipping. It does prevent the geography from being overstated. Bulgarian officials treated the incident as a maritime-security and search-and-rescue emergency and scheduled a meeting of the Consultative Council for National Security for 7 October.
The significance is the reported expansion of drone attacks into a busy part of the western Black Sea and against ships not described as naval targets. Radev said the incident was disrupting navigation and increasing insurance costs. The attack followed a separate fatal incident off Romania, but the available evidence does not establish that the two events had the same operator or command chain.
Material questions remain open: the fate and number of people aboard Alfa Watan, the vessels’ complete cargo information, the drones’ origin and type, and whether pollution occurred. Any attribution should await evidence from recovered wreckage, surveillance data or a formal investigation. Until then, the confirmed story is a combined drone attack, a sunken merchant ship and an ongoing Bulgarian response—not a verified conclusion about who ordered it.
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DWN interpretation is identified in the text. This is not original field reporting or independent technical validation. Historical background retains its original dates; a later expansion date does not turn an old announcement into new news.