hijacking - The African Mirror

Dec

01

2023

Red Sea attacks on ships spark safety concerns for sailors

NEWS

COMMERCIAL ships face increasing dangers at sea after armed groups have attacked and seized vessels in waters around the Red Sea and off the coast of Yemen, adding to perils for seafarers, shipping officials said. An attempted hijacking of a commercial vessel in the Gulf of Aden on Sunday appears to have been carried out by armed Somali pirates and not Yemeni Houthis, despite the firing of missiles from Houthi-controlled territory in Yemen afterwards, the Pentagon said on Monday. The incident is the latest in a series of attacks in Middle Eastern waters since a brutal war between Israel and the Palestinian…

Somalia takes control of key port from al Shabaab

NEWS

ABDIQANI HASSAN SOMALIA'S government-led forces have captured an al Shabaab stronghold on the Indian Ocean coast, the defence minister said, in one of their most significant victories since launching an offensive against the Islamist group last year. The forces took the port town of Harardhere as well as the nearby town of Galcad in central Somalia's Galmudug region, Defence Minister Abdulkadir Mohamed Nur said in a broadcast on state-owned television. Harardhere was a major base for pirates hijacking merchant ships until 2011. It was later taken over by al Shabaab, which first rose up against the government in 2007 before…

Hijacking ends in Arabian Sea, as Oman identifies tanker involved

WORLD

OMAN has identified the Panama-flagged Asphalt Princess as the tanker involved in a hijacking which Britain's maritime trade agency earlier said was over. The statement by Oman's Maritime Security Centre was the first official confirmation of Tuesday's incident in the Arabian Sea which maritime security sources had told Reuters involved suspected Iranian-backed forces. Iran denied any involvement. The United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations (UKMTO) said in a warning notice based on a third-party source on Wednesday that people who had boarded a tanker involved in a "potential hijack" had since left and that the vessel, which it did not identify,…