Pirates have attacked a Turkish cargo ship off the coast of Nigeria,
kidnapping six crew members in a region increasingly hit by piracy in
recent years, the Nigerian navy said on Monday.
“All the six
Turkish crew members, including the captain of the vessel, the chief
officer and the chief engineer, were abducted by the attackers,”
Nigerian Navy spokesman, Chris Ezekobe told AFP.
The pirates
attacked the vessel in the dead of night while it was steaming through
the oil-rich Niger Delta, added the spokesman.
Ezekobe said the
ship, a merchant tanker, was used for crude oil operations and the navy
was working with Interpol and Nigeria’s secret police to secure the
crew’s release.
Turkey’s Deniz News Agency said the ship, the M/T Puli, was owned by Kaptanoglu Shipping.
Both the kidnapped crew and those who remained on the ship, were “in good health”, the company was reported as saying.
It
was unclear how many crew members were aboard, which was carrying
chemicals, when it was attacked. Company officials said they have had no
contact with the pirates.
Dirk Steffen, director of maritime
security at the Denmark-based Risk Intelligence firm, said the vessel
was en route from Port Gentil in Gabon to the Ivory Coast capital,
Abidjan, at the time of the attack.
“The attackers had possibly already attempted to board another ship in the vicinity the previous day,”
“It
is extremely busy outside the Niger Delta at the moment and we had
three attacks against tankers before this one between April 7 and 10,”
he said in an email.
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