Car ferry carrying 300 people catches fire off Sweden coast

A fire that broke out on a car ferry carrying 300 people off Sweden's coast on Monday has been extinguished and the ship will be towed to port, Swedish maritime authorities said.

The blaze appeared to have started on a refrigeration lorry on the car deck of the Stena Scandica, which was sailing from Sweden to Latvia.

"The fire is out," Swedish Maritime Administration spokeswoman Lisa Mjorning told AFP.

"The ferry will be towed to port in the next three to four hours", she said, adding that it would be towed to Nynashamn, south of Stockholm.

The 300 people on board had remained on the vessel, she added, correcting earlier information that an evacuation had begun.

"There are no injuries on board and there has been no evacuation," she said.

Earlier, a spokesman for the company Stena Line operating the ferry, Stefan Elfstrom, had said it was "a limited fire ... concentrated to a cooling truck on the car deck.

"It seems the fire started in a cooling truck", he said, adding that there had been "mainly smoke".

The Swedish Maritime Administration had sent three helicopters and seven vessels to the vessel, which was located off the island of Gotska Sandon on Sweden's southeastern coast.

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