ISTANBUL/MOSCOW: Turkish officials on Tuesday said a drone attack on two civilian vessels in the Black Sea had left crew members injured.

The foreign ministry said the ships were attacked after leaving the Russian port of Novorossiysk late on Monday and several personnel were wounded, adding that “their situation is being closely monitored”.

“We are deeply concerned about the escalating conflict between Russia and Ukraine in the Black Sea, which is affecting civilian shipping despite our numerous warnings,” the ministry said.

It called on all parties to “urgently implement concrete measures to ensure the safety of navigation in the Black Sea” and warned that food supplies could be affected otherwise.

Soldier kills four, including civilians, in Crimea

According to monitoring site Marine­Traffic, the two ships — identified by the mi­­n­­­istry as Yasar and Nadezhda — sail under the Panamanian and Cameroonian flags res­pectively but are owned by Turkish companies.

Russia and Ukraine have been stepping up strikes on cargo vessels for several weeks.

A Turkish fishing vessel was attacked in late June in the Black Sea near the coast of Crimea, leaving one dead and four injured.

At the end of May, Turkiye had warned of an “uncontrolled escalation” in the Black Sea region after a drone attack on a Turkish cargo ship. The Ukrainian navy claimed that a Russian drone had attacked the vessel.

Soldier kills 4 in Crimea

Four people, including three civilians, were killed by an unidentified soldier in the Black Sea city of Sevastopol in Russian-annexed Crimea, the city’s Moscow-installed governor said on Tuesday.

“A tragedy in Sevastopol… According to initial information, a soldier opened fire on his fellow servicemen, killing one person, before attacking civilians and killing three of them,” Mikhail Razvozhayev wrote on Telegram.

He added the assailant, whose nationality was not specified and whose motives were not immediately clear, was arrested. The civilian victims were two men aged 71 and 59, and a 64-year-old woman, Razvozhayev added.

Crimea, a peninsula annexed by Russia from Ukraine in 2014, has for weeks been the target of Ukrainian retaliatory attacks aimed at disrupting the logistics of Russian forces deployed in southern Ukraine.

Five killed in Moscow

A drone strike on an industrial zone outside the Russian capital killed five people and wounded 10 others, the region’s governor said, as Moscow and Kyiv traded attacks.

Ukraine has conducted long-range strikes targeting civilian infrastructure in Russia, and in recent weeks stepped up attacks on warehouses belonging to the Russian e-commerce giant Wildberries.

Ukraine often fires hundreds of drones into Russia each night, in retaliation for Russia launching hundreds of its own drones and dozens of missiles at Ukrainian towns and cities.

Moscow’s regional governor Andrey Vorobyov said early Tuesday that several fires broke out following a drone strike in the Novoselki industrial zone outside the Russian capital.

Published in Dawn, August 5th, 2026