Bulgaria‘s defence ministry said on Monday it had sent a special unit to inspect and deactivate a drone carrying explosives which landed on Sunday evening in the Black Sea town of Tyulenovo, according to Reuters.
Following inspection the team from NATO-member Bulgaria will decide how to dispose of it, the ministry said in a statement, adding that the team had been sent on the request of the regional government.
The tourist resort of Tyulenovo is situated 70 kilometres south of the Romanian border and across the Black Sea from Crimea, the Ukrainian peninsula forcibly annexed by Russia in 2014 and now a regular target of Ukrainian drone attacks.
“Last night, around 9:30 p.m., a signal was sent to 112, shortly after 10 p.m. the area was cordoned off by the police with a ban on people’s access and the use of restaurants’ terraces,” Marian Zhechev, mayor of Shabla municipality of which Tyulenovo is a part, told Nova TV.
He said the drone was found on rocks next to moored boats at Tyulenovo and was an “aircraft with standard ammunition”.
It was unclear whether the drone had fallen from the air or had been washed in by the sea currents.
Nova.bg web site quoted witnesses as saying that the drone was between 3 and 3.5 metres long and that it had a container with explosives attached to it.
Last week fragments of a suspected drone were found in Romania, after a new Russian attack on Ukraine’s Danube ports across the border.