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Chaos erupted aboard a Regina Seaways ferry carrying 335 passengers on Tuesday as a result of an explosion in its engine room.
Russian and Lithuanian rescuers rush to the scene with lifeboats and helicopters.
The ship, sailing from Kiel, Germany to Klaipeda, Lithuania, made a distress call at 10:45 am.
The authorities say that all passengers are safe and no fire has occurred.
The ship is now being towed to the port of Klapeida, Lithuania.
The 'Regina Seaways' MS, owned by the Danish company DFDS SEAWAYS, was located in international waters at the time of the explosion, about 135 km from Kaliningrad, a Russian enclave between Poland and Lithuania.
To date, no casualties have been reported.
The chief of rescue at sea, Andrey Permyakov, told the Russian news agency TASS that the explosion had been followed by a fire, which had ravaged the engine room, but the only thing that had happened was that it had been destroyed. fire is now extinguished.
The Lithuanian Ministry of Defense stated that it saw shots coming from the ship.
However, a spokesman for DFDS told Reuters that the engine room was never on fire.
He said: "There was vibration and smoke, but no fire was noticed."
The company added that the ferry would be towed to the Lithuanian port town of Klaipeda, where it was heading from Kiel in Germany, due to technical problems.
The head of the Federal Agency for Shipping and Inland Waterways, Alexey Kravchenko, told RT that the ferry had on board 298 members of the public and 37 crew members.
