Possible Piracy Incident with Product Tanker off Somalia Being Investigated
The EU’s security operation EUNVAFOR Atalanta confirmed that it is investigating a possible armed boarding linked to local piracy off Somalia. It comes shortly after another Iranian dhow was held for several days, and the authorities have warned of a moderate risk of activity in the region.
Few details have been released, and Atalanta has not yet posted an official notice or dismissed the reports. Atalanta told The Maritime Executive that “An incident off Somalia is currently under investigation …. Any incident that is ultimately deemed relevant and confirmed will be published on the Atalanta Maritime Security Center Indian Ocean - MSCIO - website and sent out as an alert to all registered users.”
The possible boarding was reported to have happened today, April 21, according to security consultants Diaplous Group, while an unidentified product tanker was about 24 nautical miles southeast of Xaafuun (Hafun) in northern Somalia near the Horn of Africa. According to the information received by Diaplous, a group of armed intruders is thought to have boarded the vessel.
It is raising further concern because yesterday, April 20, it reports a Somali-flagged fishing vessel was also thought to have been boarded in the same area. Diaplous says 11 armed individuals are thought to have taken control of the fishing boat.
“It is ALMOST CERTAIN that the PAG's tactics for conducting piracy on the high seas involve hijacking a dhow and using it as a mother ship. The pirates then blend in with the usual traffic and deploy skiffs from the mother ship to attack vessels,” Atalanta writes in its overview of the region. It believes that local groups are also organizing to attack Yemeni fishing dhows along the coast.
Since the beginning of the year, it has tracked five incidents in international waters. The most recent one in March involved 24 people kidnapped on an Iranian dhow. The warships assigned to Atalanta located the dhow and remained close until the pirates fled. At the end of February, it also recorded an incident with an Iranian dhow where nine boarders took control of the ship. During the intervention by local authorities, reports indicated that one attacker was killed and two were injured. The authorities in the Puntland region allegedly arrested three pirates and took one of the two skiffs into custody.
Atalanta believes a ransom was paid at the beginning of the year when a Chinese fishing vessel was seized. It warned, “That the ransom paid for the Liao Dong Yu will set a bad example for other pirate groups trying to imitate that operation.”
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Piracy incidents are typically seasonally timed to the windows between the monsoon seasons. The current window historically concludes by May with the start of the southwest monsoon season and does not resume until October.