ISTANBUL, Turkey (AFP) — They’d just had breakfast when a huge blast brought the crew of the Turkish fishing boat racing out onto main deck, where they were standing when the second strike hit. 

“There was fire and smoke, the blast lifted us up and threw us left and right, it was very powerful,” said Ahmet Ozlu, 40, one of five fishermen on board the Turkish-flagged Duru 67 that was hit by a drone off Crimea on 5 June.

Such attacks on commercial vessels have multiplied in recent months as the Russia-Ukraine war has spilled into the Black Sea, with Turkish ships increasingly in the firing line. 

A fire broke out and the boat began taking on water, so the fishermen rushed to the bridge where they found their captain and childhood friend Cuneyt Varlik, 45, lying in a pool of his own blood, his carotid artery severed by shrapnel. 

Putting out a distress call, they waited bleeding and terrified as the boat sank lower until they were rescued an hour later. 

“We thought we were going to die. And we were terrified of another strike,” said Ozlu, who suffered extensive shrapnel injuries. 

The attack was never claimed but the Turkish coastguard told them it was a Ukrainian drone which hit them “by mistake,” he said. 

“We never thought Ukraine would hit us because our flag was raised. We are civilians, our boat doesn’t carry weapons,” said his older brother Mehmet Ozlu, 53, who suffered extensive internal and external injuries. 

Both deeply traumatized, neither brother has been back out to sea due to their injuries, Mehmet explained while helping mend nets in the northeastern port of Trabzon. 

“I still ask myself why Ukraine hit people like us, Turkish civilians. As a state, they owe us an answer and compensation because this has ruined my and my children’s future,” he said. 

‘Impossible to work’ 

Despite its ties with both Russia and Ukraine, Turkey has been infuriated by the violence, accusing the warring sides of “attacking all commercial shipping without distinction.”

“The recent attacks on commercial vessels in the Black Sea are unacceptable, regardless of who is responsible for them,” President Recep Tayyip Erdogan told the United Nations General Assembly in New York on Tuesday.

Since the start of the war, 226 civilian and commercial vessels have been attacked in the Black Sea, the vast majority this year, Turkey’s Chamber of Maritime Commerce (IMEAK) says.

“The fact that 163 — more than 70 percent -- were targeted in the first eight months of 2026 clearly shows the gravity of the situation,” IMEAK chairman Tamer Kiran said on 27 August. 

Of that number, 22 Turkish-owned vessels were attacked in the preceding two months, he said. Four more have been hit since then, industry sources say. 

One was the MV Reyhan Sari that was attacked on 22 July after collecting a shipment of Russian coal, killing one and wounding three.