Ferry catches fire in Baltic, no one hurt

Copenhagen, Oct. 2: A ferry with around 300 people on board was stranded in the Baltic Sea on Tuesday after the ship's engine failed, the Danish operator said. No injuries were reported and an evacuation wasn't immediately necessary.

The breakdown aboard the Regina Seaways produced smoke, which triggered the ship's fire extinguishing system in the engine room, Copenhagenbased DFDS Seaways said. The vessel was in international waters off Kaliningrad, Russia's Baltic Sea exclave between Poland and Lithuania.

"We are talking about a malfunction in the engine room that caused a lot of smoke," DFDS spokesman Gert Jakobsen told The Associated Press. "Right now we are inspecting the engine room to find out whether the ship can sail on its own or needs to be tugged." He said passengers had assembled at muster stations in preparation for a possible evacuation, but the "situation is under control."

The ferry, which also had cars and trucks on board, was traveling from Kiel, Germany to Klaipeda, Lithuania's port city north of Kaliningrad. The crossing, one of DFDS' many in the Baltic Sea region, normally takes about 20 hours.

"On these kinds of crossings we have people from Germany, the Baltic countries and Russia. We cannot say now who was onboard," Jakobsen said.