Pirates hijacked 15 crew members of a chemical ship in the Gulf of Guinea after boarding the ship off the coast of Benin, Dutch ship owners said on Friday.
The last offshore piracy incident occurred on Thursday afternoon, about 210 nautical miles (389 kilometers) south of Cotonou, when pirates attacked the chemical ship Davide B, oil company De Poli said.
“Fifteen crew members were taken … while six other sailors on the ship are safe and unharmed,” said the company, based in Barendrecht, south of the Dutch port city of Rotterdam.
The six crew members “remain on board the ship,” added the De Poli ship administration.
Davide B, registered in Malta, was sailing from Riga to Lagos, Nigeria, when the attack took place.
“The company’s management is now very concerned with the welfare of the missing crew,” said company spokesman Cor Radings.
“Our main priority now is to establish contact with the missing crew in order to ensure their fastest and safest release,” he told AFP.
He was unable to give details of the missing crew members, but they are believed to be Russians, Ukrainians and Filipinos.
The rest of the sailors left the ship unharmed, which “is currently assisted by security guards who have arrived at the scene,” said Radings.
He added that there was no further information on the physical condition of the abducted sailors.
– Kidnap to ransom –
Hijacking attacks on ships in exchange for ransom have become common in the Gulf of Guinea, which runs from Senegal to Angola, reaching the southwest coast of Nigeria.
Perpetrators are generally Nigerian pirates.
The Gulf of Guinea was responsible for more than 95 percent of all maritime hijackings last year – 130 of the 135 cases, according to the International Maritime Bureau (IMB), which monitors safety at sea.
This year, there have already been 16 acts of piracy in the area, according to maritime security consultancy Dryad Global.
Western military transporters and officers say pirates are increasingly targeting a “weakness” between Nigeria’s naval capabilities and limited foreign presence beyond its waters, where gangs know a response is less likely.
The porters say the pirates now attack further, and their violence and sophisticated tactics are leading companies to calls for a more robust foreign naval presence, such as a mission to curb piracy in Somalia a decade ago.
– Call to action –
Since December, Danish, Indian and Cypriot maritime lobbies have called for action against piracy.
The Danish industry, with an average of 30 to 40 ships in the Gulf of Guinea each day, is lobbying for a “coalition of willing” to operate a naval deterrent while helping local forces to increase their capacity.
Earlier this month, the world navigation giant Maersk called for a major naval mission to protect the busy but dangerous sea routes on the west coast of Africa.
“In 2021, we should not have seafarers afraid to sail anywhere because of piracy, this is not the era of piracy,” Aslak Ross, head of maritime standards for the Danish giant, told AFP.
burs-jhe / tgb