Ferry Engine Room Fire Extinguished

Fire broke out on Sunday evening in the engine room of a passenger ferry with 237 people on board in the Baltic Sea about 25 nautical miles southeast of Sweden, coastguards said. The crew of the German Sassnitz RoRo ferry extinguished the fire by sealing off the engine room and no passengers were injured or evacuated. "There was a lot of smoke in the engine room. They sealed it off when they noticed the fire. Then at 9:50 p.m. local time (2050 GMT) they opened up the engine room again to check it. There was still a lot of smoke but no fire," coastguard spokesman Peter Lindquist said. The Scandlines ferry was to be towed with all passengers on board back to the German port of Sassnitz from where it set out. The cause of the fire was unclear. The 21,000-ton ferry was in Swedish territorial waters on its way to the southern Swedish town of Trelleborg when the fire started, Lindquist said. Some media had reported earlier it was sailing the other way. The German Maritime Emergency Service in Bremen said the vessel was traveling from Germany to Sweden. - (Reuters)