BERLIN – More than 200 passengers and crew were evacuated after a Lithuanian-flagged ferry caught fire near the German island of Fehmarn in the Baltic Sea, German authorities said on Saturday.
Some 28 people were injured and 23 were still in hospital, a police spokesman said. All the injuries were light and most were from smoke inhalation, he said.
The passenger and car ferry Lisco Gloria was en route from the northern city of Kiel to the Lithuanian port of Klaipeda when an explosion occurred on the upper deck around midnight, said the German Central Command for Maritime Emergencies, based in Cuxhaven.
A technical defect in one of the trucks on the ferry may have started the fire, the police spokesman said. “There are currently no indications at all that this could have been a terror attack,” the maritime command spokesman said. “Of course the police will investigate this further, but it seems to have been an accident.” The ferry Deutschland and a police vessel had been nearby at the time of the incident and came to the rescue of passengers either swimming in the water or clinging to life rafts.
There were 204 passengers and 32 crew on board the ship, according to the passenger list, said DFDS Seaways, the Danish company that owns the Lisco Gloria.
They came from Germany, Russia, Lithuania, Latvia, Denmark and Argentina, the police spokesman said.
The Deutschland transported the remaining passengers and crew to Kiel, where they would be questioned by police as part of an investigation into the incident, according to the DFDS website.
Firefighters and rescue vessels remained with the stricken Lisco Gloria, a 200m vessel.
Specialists entered the vessel and set anchor in Danish waters, stopping the ferry from drifting, the maritime emergencies command said.
“The vessel is ablaze . . . and it is realistic to expect that it will burn the whole day,” the spokesman said. Rescue efforts now focused on cooling the vessel to prevent the fire from spreading further and the ship from sinking.
The Lisco Gloria, built in 2002, operated on the route between Klaipeda and Kiel three times a week, according to the DFDS Seaways website. It had space for more than 300 passengers in 73 cabins and managed a speed of 22 knots. – (Reuters)