Piracy of international shipping lanes shows few signs of abating as Reuters reports an Italian tanker carrying a cargo of diesel fuel has been seized by pirates in the Gulf of Guinea in West Africa.
According to a Reuters report of a statement by the Italian Foreign Ministry, the ship, the ‘RBD Anema e Core’ with a crew of 23 on board, was taken in the early hours of Sunday when a number of assailants boarded. Two of the crew are Italians, the others Filipinos and Romanians.
Two Italian ships have been captured in recent months on the other side of the continent in the Indian Ocean, where pirate groups operating from the lawless Horn of Africa have been a scourge of international shipping for a number of years.
Piracy is on the rise in the Gulf of Guinea, although it is not on the scale seen off Somalia, where armed sea-borne gangs are making millions of dollars in ransoms and are becoming increasingly violent.
The news follows confirmation last week that a UAE-owned vessel, the MV Jubba XX, has been taken over by pirates in the northern Indian Ocean. According to a report in the Kaleej Times, the fully-laden tanker was on her regular voyage from the UAE to Berbera, in Somalia.
Five UAE ships were attacked in the first half of the year, according to statistics compiled by the International Maritime Bureau (IMB), accessed by Khaleej Times. This is a new high when compared to the corresponding period last year when no attacks on the country’s vessels were reported by the Bureau.
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