A group of suspected Somali pirates has reportedly boarded boarded the Bangladesh-owned bulker approximately 600 nautical miles east of Somalia’s capital city of Mogadishu.
“The 23 crew members of a Bangladesh-flagged cargo ship boarded by pirates off Somalia this week have been taken hostage, and a European Union vessel is tracking the ship as it heads toward the coast, the EU’s maritime security force said Wednesday.
An EU ship deployed as part of Operation ATALANTA is ‘shadowing’ the cargo carrier, the EU force said in a statement.
‘The situation on board is that pirates have seized and taken its 23-member crew hostage’, the statement said. ‘The crew is safe, and the action is still ongoing. The ship is sailing towards the Somali coast’.
Twenty armed assailants took control of the vessel while it was going from the Mozambique capital Maputo to Hamriya in the United Arab Emirates, according to Ambrey, a British maritime security company.
The ship is owned by Bangladeshi company SR Shipping Lines, a sister concern of Chattogram-based Kabir Steel and Rerolling Mill Group, company media advisor Mizanul Islam told local media in Bangladesh.
In December, at least two incidents were reported. One involved a trading vessel seized by heavily armed people near the town of Eyl off the coast of Somalia. The other involved a Maltese-flagged merchant vessel that was hijacked in the Arabian Sea last and moved to the same area off Somalia’s coast.
The waters off Somalia saw a peak in piracy in 2011 when the U.N. said more than 160 attacks were recorded. The incidents declined drastically afterward, largely due to the presence of American and allied navies in international waters”. -Associated Press
As a result of the U.S.-led multinational naval task force having been diverted north from the Gulf of Aden into the southern Red Sea in an attempt to put an end to the Yemeni Houthi militant group’s ongoing campaign against merchant shipping in the vital commercial corridor, pirate activity began to rise again late last year with the first successful case since 2017 of Somali piracy documented last December, sparking concerns that a potential resurgence of raids in the Indian Ocean off of Somalia’s coast will open up a second front in the ongoing maritime attacks against international shipping around the Red Sea and the Horn of Africa.