SOFIA, Sept 27: A Ukrainian ship sank early on Saturday off Bulgaria’s Black Sea coast in bad weather, and 10 crew members are still missing, the Bulgarian transport ministry said.

Only an empty lifeboat had been found at the scene off Cape Emine where the 5,000-tonne Tolstoy went down, the ministry said.

The ship, sailing under a North Korean flag, sent no distress signal, but the Bulgarian authorities were alerted by a Russian satellite centre, Nikolai Apostolov, head of the Bulgarian maritime office said earlier.

The transport ministry said 10 people were on board. The captain was Russian and the rest of the crew was Ukrainian, the port official said.

A port official in Rostov-on-Don, from which the Tolstoy sailed on September 21, had earlier said there were 13 crew members on board.

Apostolov added that the ship was in “bad condition,” according to records from the Rostov-on-Don.

Earlier, Transport Minister Petar Mutafchiyev told state radio that bad weather was to blame for the incident.

The Tolstoy was carrying a cargo of scrap metal to the Turkish port of Nemrut, Apostolov said.

The Bulgarian transport ministry originally described the vessel as Russian but said later it was owned by a Ukrainian company, Regina Ship, of Kiev.

—AFP