Pirates hijack ship, kidnap 5 crew members

Sea robbers on Monday hijacked a Ghanaian flagged ship, AM DELTA, off Nigeria waters and abducted five of her crew members.

It’s the ninth case of hijack recorded along the country’s water in the last two weeks.

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The attack came despite claims by the Nigerian Navy that its boats were regularly on patrol of the Gulf of Guinea.

The latest hijack occurred at about 0400UTC, about 45 nautical miles off Brass water, in Nigeria.

Sources said the gunmen boarded the vessel in the early hours of Monday and went away with five of her crew members.

One of the source said Monday’s hijack came barely 72 hours after 15 Chinese crew onboard a Motor Tanker were kidnapped off the coast São Tomé.

A maritime security surveillance outfit, Dryad Global, said the vessel was understood to have been boarded by six to seven pirates and that the victims had been taken away to an unknown location.

The kidnapped crews are all believed to be Ghanaian nationals.

Reports also indicate that the perpetrators damaged the onboard communications and navigation equipment before they left the ship to drift with just two crew onboard.

This latest incident takes the total volume of kidnapped personnel from vessels within the Gulf of Guinea to 115 across 22 incidents within 2020.

Daily Trust learnt that the incident occurred closer to shore than the majority of incidents in 2020, thereby reflecting the developed trend of incidents at the 80+nm range.

The boarding by armed perpetrators, it was gathered, reinforced the critical risk rating in the Gulf of Guinea HRA after 7 incidents of unsuccessful approaches and attacks in the past week including the current two successful kidnappings in the last four days.