Fears continue to rise for the ships caught in the fighting in Ukraine, as reports from Bangladesh indicate that a third engineer was killed by an artillery or missile attack near Mykolaiv.
The bulker Banglar Samriddhi was reported as stranded at the anchorage off the Port of Olvia, located in the Mykolaiv region on the northern Black Sea coast.
The vessel said had a crew of 29 with supplies to last no more than two weeks. After the beginning of the war, the crew reported that they were stranded when Ukraine closed its seaports.
They called on the Bangladesh government to take steps to rescue them, and the Bangladesh Shipping Corporation said that its chartering department was working to move the vessel to a safe location.
However, the Ukrainian Sea Ports Authority is reporting that the vessel was struck by one Russian missile hitting the superstructure of the vessel. The Ukrainian authorities also reported that two tugs were sent to help the vessel and that they believed there were no injuries among the crew.
Nonetheless, Bangladeshi media reported that the third engineer of the vessel was killed during the attack. The crew was able to control the fire after the vessel was hit and that the other crew members were uninjured.
In light of the Ukraine-Russia tension, the IMO Secretary-General, Kitack Lim, issued a statement supporting the call of UN Secretary-General António Guterres for hostilities to cease immediately.
As IMO Secretary-General Kitack Lim said:
As the humanitarian crisis continues to unfold in Ukraine, I fully support and stand with UN Secretary-General António Guterres’ call for hostilities to cease immediately
He also noted that he is “gravely concerned about the spill over effects of the military action in Ukraine on global shipping,” as well as logistics and supply chains, and in particular the impacts on the delivery of commodities and food to developing nations and the impacts on energy supplies.
Furthermore, InterManager stated that shipping needs to focus on its international nature and pull together at this difficult time, an emergency meeting of ship managers agreed today, InterManager stated.
