Pirates kidnapped eight crew members from a general cargo ship off the coast of Cameroon in West Africa. The vessel's Hamburg, Germany-based shipowner, MC-Schiffahrt, confirmed the incident in a statement posted to its website. The company said its MV MarMalaita was attacked Thursday, August 14, between 23.00h and 24.00h local time at the Douala anchorage in … [Read more...]
Pirates Kidnap Ten Turkish Sailors Off Nigeria
ANKARA, July 16 (Reuters) - Ten Turkish sailors were taken hostage by armed pirates who attacked a Turkish-flagged cargo ship off the coast of Nigeria, the vessel's owner said on Tuesday, adding that another eight sailors were left safely aboard. Turkey's foreign ministry said the sailors were seized on Saturday evening. After the pirates left the ship it was taken to … [Read more...]
Opinion: How to Stop Pirates Plaguing West Africa
(Bloomberg Opinion) --Remember those Somali pirates? Earlier this decade, they brazenly hijacked giant oil tankers, demanded ransoms in the millions of dollars, and gave Tom Hanks yet another chance to play the everyman overcoming a life-defining crisis. Now, thanks to a multinational naval crackdown and tighter security measures by shippers, they’ve been forced back to dry … [Read more...]
IMB: Piracy Incidents Fall But Kidnapping Threat Persists in Gulf of Guinea
Fewer incidents of piracy and armed robbery at sea were reported in the first three months of 2019, but risk of kidnappings continue to pose a threat to ship and crews in the Gulf of Guinea, the International Maritime Bureau's Piracy Reporting Centre said in its first detailed quarterly report of the year. In the first quarter of 2019, IMB reported 38 incidents of piracy and … [Read more...]
Hijacking of Oil Tanker Is a Turning Point in the Migrant Crisis
By Caroline Alexander (Bloomberg) -- Italian Deputy Prime Minister Matteo Salvini called them “pirates.” But the women and children who disembarked from a cargo ship hijacked by migrants in European waters were simply desperate. They were among the 108 people escaping what human rights groups say is torture and sexual assault in Libya, a country left broken by a … [Read more...]