“In the evening, the enemy launched a new attack on port infrastructure in the Odesa region. During the attack, an enemy drone hit a civilian ship flying the flag of the Marshall Islands,” said the head of the regional military administration, Oleh Kiper, on the social network Telegram.
“A fire broke out on the ship. Unfortunately, two people died,” he said.
Earlier, O. Kiper reported that two commercial ships flying the flags of Tanzania and Liberia, sailing in the Black Sea, were also hit.
“As a result (…) the captain of one of the ships died,” he said, adding that the remaining 11 crew members were evacuated, three of whom were injured.
O. Kiper said that the ships attacked in the Black Sea were sailing corridors designated for Ukraine’s grain exports.
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“Each of these cynical enemy strikes is a war crime against peaceful civilians, civil shipping, and global food security,” he said.
The Russian military regularly targets Ukraine’s port infrastructure, especially in the Odesa region.
Ukrainian forces, in turn, have intensified attacks on ships in the Sea of Azov, which is an important channel for transporting Russian agricultural products and supplying the annexed Crimea.
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