Romania evacuates border area after Russian drone strike sets gas tanker ablaze on Danube

Romanian authorities evacuated the village of Plauru, near the border with Ukraine, after Russian drones struck a tanker loaded with gas on the Danube River, setting it ablaze.

The tanker, located just a few hundred meters from the village, posed an imminent threat.

“It could explode at any time,” Politico quoted Tudor Cernega, mayor of the Ceatalchioi commune, which includes Plauru, as saying to Romanian news site Digi24.

“We checked house by house, we also took out the animals,” the mayor added. “We closed off traffic, the danger is great.”

Romania’s Department for Emergency Situations said on social media that the fire erupted following a “drone attack carried out on the territory of Ukraine” on Sunday night, which caused “a ship loaded with LPG” to be “engulfed in flames in the area of Izmail,” a Ukrainian port city in the southwest near the Romanian border.

The department said it had ordered the evacuation of the entire Ceatalchioi commune, home to around 250 residents, and dispatched vehicles and ambulances to assist.

The tanker, the Turkish-flagged ORINDA, can carry roughly 1.8 million gallons of liquefied petroleum gas. The crew was evacuated safely after the fire broke out, with videos showing large plumes of smoke and flames rising from the vessel.

Moscow has repeatedly targeted Ukrainian port facilities along the Danube during its full-scale invasion, and parts of drones have been found on Romanian territory on several occasions, highlighting the spillover risks of the conflict.

With inputs from agencies