Five crew members killed during hijacking of tanker off Somalia
Somali authorities said pirates killed five crew members aboard the Palau-flagged MT Honour 25 before security forces rescued the tanker and captured 16 suspected pirates. Four other crew members were injured. Officials said the deaths were the first attributed to Somali pirates in more than a decade.
Five crew members were killed during the hijacking of a Palau-flagged oil tanker off Somalia before security forces rescued the vessel, Somali authorities said. The MT Honour 25 was seized by pirates on April 21 while carrying 18,500 barrels of oil, according to the supplied report. Puntland’s Information Ministry said a rescue operation freed the ship and captured 16 suspected pirates.
The ministry said the pirates killed five crew members before the operation began. Those killed included three Pakistanis, one person from Myanmar and one from India. Four other crew members—three Pakistanis and one Indian—were injured.
The Puntland Maritime Police Force said the tanker was safe and under government control. It said efforts were continuing to locate others involved in the hijacking. The reported deaths appear to be the first killings attributed to Somali pirates in more than a decade, according to the source.
They come amid a reported resurgence in piracy off Somalia, with officials saying at least 15 attacks have been recorded since April. The rescue followed another operation the previous week in which maritime police freed the Sibu 1, a US-sanctioned tanker hijacked in August. Twenty-eight of the 41 pirates arrested in that case later escaped while being transferred to jail, prompting accusations of police complicity from Puntland security officials.
A previous wave of Somali piracy, from 2008 to 2014, disrupted a major shipping route, imposed billions of dollars in economic costs and generated hundreds of millions of dollars in ransom payments.
This independently written report is based on information supplied by the named publisher. Vertrix News has not independently verified the source report.