A Panama-flagged cargo ship with 24 crew members, mostly Chinese, on board sank in the Bay of Bengal on Saturday, about 240 nautical miles off the Odisha coast, officials said.

Twenty of the crew members on the ship, MV Ocean Winner, were Chinese, three Myanmarese and one Bangladeshi, they said.

The ship was heading to Singapore carrying 72,100 mt of iron ore fines from Odisha. It had left the Paradip coast at 10.42 pm on August 20, they added.

"The Indian Coast Guard and Indian Navy have launched a rescue operation. So far, two persons have been rescued from the waters," a senior IPS officer told PTI.

Another nearby ship has also come to the rescue of MV Ocean Winner, he said.