A drone struck the commercial cargo ship Larissa 1 in Romanian territorial waters on Friday evening, 13 November, at about 9:40 p.m., while the vessel was at anchor on its way to Ukraine, Romanian broadcaster Digi24 reported on Saturday. No crew member was injured and no fire broke out; the drone damaged the ship's cargo crane.

Source: Digi24, via Security Signal, Nov 14, 2026

Bulgarian and Romanian media put the strike about seven nautical miles (about 13 kilometres) north-east of Sfantu Gheorghe in Tulcea county, off the Danube port of Sulina. The maritime tracker VesselTracker, reporting the same incident, put it 6.8 nautical miles north-east of Sfantu Gheorghe and said the captain reported all seafarers safe.

Source: BTA, Mediafax and Jurnal de Constanta, via Nuntii Europae, Nov 14, 2026

Romania's Defence Minister, Stefan-Radu Oprea, confirmed the incident on Saturday at the Military Port of Constanta and said an investigation is under way. Oprea said he had been informed during the night and was coordinating with the Navy, the Ministry of Internal Affairs and the Coast Guard. Romanian authorities have not attributed the strike to any specific actor.

Digi24 described the Larissa 1 as Palau-flagged. Starboard Maritime Intelligence data examined by The Insider lists its owner as AKN Shipping Ltd, registered in Liberia and physically located in Turkey. The ship had sailed from Bizerte in Tunisia and was bound for Sulina, from where it was to continue to Ukraine.

Two Romanian F-16 aircraft took off to monitor the country's airspace after the strike, and the Ministry of Defence said no airspace violations were reported. Oprea said air-raid alerts had been issued at least twice in different parts of Tulcea county the previous day, that Romania is detecting drones approaching its borders and airspace and drones appearing over the water, and that Romanian pilots had shot down six drones up to that day.

The tenth ship hit near NATO's Black Sea coast since October

The strike on the Larissa 1 was at least the tenth against a merchant ship near the coasts of NATO countries since the beginning of October 2026, according to The Insider. A Digi24-reported tally says 34 sailors were killed or reported missing in the October attacks, in which at least eight vessels were struck and four sank; the same reporting puts the total for 2026 at 570 vessels attacked in the Black Sea, killing at least 40 sailors. The Financial Times described the Black Sea as the world's most dangerous shipping route on October 25.

On October 23, a commercial ship was hit by drones about 13 nautical miles from Constanta, leaving one sailor dead and three missing — one of the earlier attacks in the same pattern off Romania's coast. Read: Ship sinks off Constanta, one dead and three missing

Four days before Friday's strike, on November 9, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen announced 50 million euros (yaani about five crore euros) for a Black Sea Maritime Security Hub, underlining how central the shipping risk off Romania and Bulgaria has become for the European Union and NATO.

What happens next rests on Romania's investigation: technical inspections of the Larissa 1, any attribution Bucharest chooses to publish, and whether shipping bound for Ukrainian ports through Sulina and the Danube faces new warnings or escorts. For now, the confirmed facts are narrow — one drone, one damaged crane, a crew that escaped unharmed, and a pattern of attacks on civilian shipping that has reached Romanian territorial waters again.