The incident happened in the western Caspian Sea.
The 600-ton merchant vessel Shabahang sent a distress call on Friday, prompting the dispatch of two rescue helicopters and a patrol boat to the scene, Azerbaijan’s National Maritime Center reported.
All nine crew members were rescued as the ship was sinking.
The ‘Shabahang’ is a general cargo ship built in 1993, which has recently been hauling cargo between the Iranian port of Bandar-e Anzali and Russia’s Astrakhan, according to traffic records.
The incident happened amid close attention to Iran’s maritime traffic due to Britain’s detention of a tanker with Iranian oil and the apparently retaliatory detention of a British-flagged tanker by Iran. The Caspian Sea, however, is an inland body of water not connected to global sea routes. It’s surrounded from all sides by four nations: Russia, Azerbaijan, Iran and Turkmenistan.
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