A fire on a cargo ship carrying almost 3,000 cars off the coast of the Dutch island of Ameland has left one sailor dead and 22 others hurt.

A major salvage operation is in full swing in an area of the North Sea designated a World Heritage site.

Twenty-two crew members were taken to hospital with breathing problems, burns and other injuries.

A Dutch coastguard spokesman said the fire was probably caused by one of 25 electric vehicles on board the ship.

Photos shared by the coastguard showed the Panamanian-flagged Freemantle Highway engulfed in smoke with flames licking the deck.

The coastguard told Dutch news agency ANP the fire could continue for days. Both sides of the ship were being doused with water to cool it down.

The cargo ship left the port of Bremerhaven in northern Germany at around 15:00 local time on Tuesday on course for Port Said in Egypt.

It ran into trouble overnight, about 27km (17 miles) north of the Ameland in the Wadden Sea, on the edge of the North Sea.

Members of the crew initially tried to douse the flames themselves but were overwhelmed and were eventually forced to evacuate.

The captain of the Ameland lifeboat, Willard Molenaar, told public broadcaster NOS that seven people had leapt 30m into the sea: “One by one they jumped and we had to fish them out of the water. They were really desperate so they had to jump.”

A tugboat was used to pull the cargo ship out of major shipping routes to and from Germany.

The freighter, which is operated by K-Line but owned by a subsidiary of the Japanese shipbuilding firm Imabari Shipbuilding, is currently stationary but the Dutch coastguard said it may be listing.

The immediate challenge for emergency crews at the scene is to extinguish the fire and keep the cargo ship afloat.

Salvage boats are circling, in preparation for all possible scenarios.

The North Sea foundation environmental group said the Wadden Sea had become increasingly vulnerable because of bigger ships using an extremely busy shipping route.

Four years ago 270 shipping containers, some containing chemicals, fell off another Panamanian-registered cargo ship in a storm and some of the containers washed up on Dutch beaches.

But this latest incident has also raised issues surrounding the risks of transporting electric vehicles.

Last year a cargo ship carrying 4,000 luxury cars caught fire and sank off the Azores. Lithium-ion batteries in the cars caught fire and firefighters needed specialist equipment to put out the fire.