Turkey has launched a search operation after contact was lost with one of two ships following a collision.
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According to the news agency Associated Press (AP), the collision occurred at 3 a.m. in the Sea of Marmara, just over 32 km south of Silivri – a western suburb of Istanbul, the city governor’s office said.
According to the report, contact with the crew of the Turkish-flagged ship “Tugberk Imamoglu” was lost after a collision with the Turkish-flagged ship “Alsu,” which appears to have not been damaged during the incident.
“Since the ship ‘Tugberk Imamoglu’ is not responding to any calls, and the crew is not answering mobile phones (…), it is believed that the cargo ship has sunk,” the maritime directorate reported after the collision, which occurred at 3:15 a.m. local (and Lithuanian) time.
“Numerous military units from the Coast Guard’s Marmara and Bosphorus headquarters and a Coast Guard helicopter were dispatched to the scene,” the governor’s office added.
The 90-meter-long cargo ship “Tugberk Imamoglu” was sailing from the Turkish Mediterranean port of Iskenderun to Ereğli on the Black Sea. According to the monitoring website Marine Traffic, the 91-meter-long ship “Alsu” is an oil or chemical tanker, sailing from Kocaeli, east of Istanbul, to Aliağa on the Aegean coast.
The Turkish straits, consisting of the Bosphorus Strait and the Dardanelles Strait at both ends of the Sea of Marmara, are among the busiest shipping routes in the world – hundreds of thousands of ships pass through these straits annually between the Mediterranean and Black Seas.
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