Dec 28 (Reuters) – A Panama-flagged bulk provider that was headed to a River Danube port to load grain hit a Russian mine within the Black Sea on Wednesday, injuring two crew members, Ukrainian officers mentioned on Thursday.
It was the most recent incident of a civilian vessel hitting an explosive within the Black Sea in what Kyiv says is stepped-up Russian assaults on transport and port infrastructure.
“A Panama-flagged civilian vessel was blown up on an enemy sea mine within the Black Sea…The vessel misplaced its course and management, and a hearth broke out on the higher deck,” Ukraine’s southern army command mentioned on Telegram.
A captain and a sailor, an Egyptian citizen, had been injured, with the latter hospitalized within the metropolis of Izmail, the pinnacle of the Odesa regional prosecutor’s workplace mentioned at a briefing.
He added that the incident occurred early on Wednesday at a river mouth.
Moscow has elevated assaults on Ukraine’s port infrastructure since mid-July, when it stop a U.N.-brokered deal that allowed protected passage of Ukrainian grain shipments by way of the Black Sea.
Kyiv since has established an alternate route, which hugs the western shores of the Black Sea. It mentioned Russian forces have been repeatedly dropping explosive units in its neighborhood.
(Reporting by Yuliia Dysa, Enhancing by William Maclean, Angus MacSwan and Christina Fincher)
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