A Singapore-flagged container ship exploded and caught fire off the southern coast of India, with four crew members believed to be missing.

According to the Associated Press, 18 crew members aboard the MV Wan Hai 503 abandoned the vessel following an explosion on June 9. The Indian Navy and Coast Guard then launched a search for four other missing crew members, but have not yet been able to find them. Ships have also been deployed to put out a fire on the 890-foot-long ship, which now sits adrift nearly 90 nautical miles from the coast of Beypore in Kerala. 

The vessel left Sri Lanka's Port of Colombo on June 7, and was scheduled to arrive in Mumbai, India on June 9. The coast guard got a distress call from the ship on the morning of June 9, reporting an explosion and a fire inside a container on board the ship. The fire is believed to have then spread to other containers, although the cause of the explosion is not yet known.

This is the second incident involving a container ship off the coast of Kerala in recent weeks, after a vessel capsized and spilled oil into the Indian Ocean on May 25. In that instance, rough sea conditions and strong winds had flooded the ship carrying an assortment of hazardous chemicals, in addition to the hundreds of tons of fuel in its tanks.