A merchant ship has been hijacked off the coast of Somalia. The British Maritime Observatory (UKMTO) said on Thursday that five to six armed people boarded the ship about 460 nautical miles east of the Somali town of Eyl. According to the captain, the crew barricaded themselves in the ship’s citadel.
The coast off the African crisis state of Somalia was a hotspot for pirate attacks a few years ago. As a result of the EU mission ‘Atalanta’, which has been active since 2008 to combat piracy there, attacks have decreased significantly. According to the IMB Piracy Reporting Center, there was another attack on December 14 in which a cargo ship was hijacked and driven to Somalia.
Somalia is located in the Horn of Africa, on the other side of the Gulf of Aden from Yemen. Since the outbreak of the Gaza war, Iran-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen have repeatedly attacked ships in the Red Sea to prevent them from sailing to Israel. The Red Sea is considered one of the most important shipping lanes for world trade as it connects the Mediterranean Sea to the Indian Ocean via the Suez Canal in Egypt.
Source: Krone
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