Suspected pirates have boarded a St. Kitts and Nevis-flagged general cargo \u200bvessel off Somalia’s waters and were sailing it towards \u200cthe Somali coastline, British maritime security groups Vanguard and Ambrey said.<\/p>\n
Somali pirates caused havoc in the waters off the Horn of Africa nation’s \u200blong coastline between 2008 and 2018. After a lull, \u200bpirate activity started to\u00a0pick up again\u00a0in late 2023.<\/p>\n
Vanguard \u2060said in a note late on Sunday it was \u200baware of reports that armed pirates had hijacked the vessel, Sward, \u200bin the vicinity of Godobjiran, Somalia. The United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations (UKMTO) said the incident occurred 6 nautical miles north-east of Garacad, describing it \u200bas a hijack.<\/p>\n
The ship’s 15-person crew comprises two Indian \u200bnationals and 13 Syrians, Vanguard said.<\/p>\n
“The vessel is currently assessed to be under \u200cpirate \u2060control and proceeding toward the Somali coastline. The Puntland Maritime Police Force has been notified,” it said.<\/p>\n
Ambrey said in a separate statement the vessel had been sailing to Mombasa, Kenya \u200bfrom Suez, Egypt \u200bat the \u2060time it was boarded. All the crew were on the bridge except two mechanics, Ambrey said.<\/p>\n
The \u200bassistant information minister of the semi-autonomous region \u200bof Puntland \u2060and Puntland security officials could not immediately be reached for comment.<\/p>\n
In November 2025, armed assailants\u00a0attacked a commercial tanker\u00a0off the coast \u2060of \u200bMogadishu, the first such incident since \u200b2024.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Suspected pirates have boarded a St. Kitts and Nevis-flagged general cargo \u200bvessel off Somalia’s waters and were sailing it towards \u200cthe Somali coastline, British maritime security groups Vanguard and Ambrey said. Somali pirates caused havoc in the waters off the Horn of Africa nation’s \u200blong coastline between 2008 and 2018. After a lull, \u200bpirate activity […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":20631,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"iawp_total_views":3,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":{"format":"standard","override":[{"template":"1","parallax":"1","fullscreen":"1","layout":"right-sidebar","sidebar":"default-sidebar","second_sidebar":"default-sidebar","sticky_sidebar":"1","share_position":"top","share_float_style":"share-monocrhome","show_featured":"1","show_post_meta":"1","show_post_author_image":"1","show_post_date":"1","post_date_format":"default","post_date_format_custom":"Y\/m\/d","show_post_reading_time":"0","post_reading_time_wpm":"300","post_calculate_word_method":"str_word_count","show_zoom_button":"0","zoom_button_out_step":"2","zoom_button_in_step":"3","show_post_tag":"1","show_comment_section":"1","number_popup_post":"1","show_post_related":"1","show_inline_post_related":"1"}],"image_override":[{"single_post_thumbnail_size":"crop-500","single_post_gallery_size":"crop-500"}],"trending_post_position":"meta","trending_post_label":"Trending","sponsored_post_label":"Sponsored by","disable_ad":"0","source_name":"Reuters","subtitle":""},"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":{"view_counter_number":"0","share_counter_number":"0","like_counter_number":"0","dislike_counter_number":"0"},"footnotes":""},"categories":[29,2362,1129],"tags":[111,2049,2750,189,5057,5058],"class_list":["post-20630","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-east-africa","category-featured","category-security","tag-kenya","tag-mogadishu","tag-mombasa","tag-somalia","tag-st-kitts-and-nevis","tag-united-kingdom-maritime-trade-operations-ukmto"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20630","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20630"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20630\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20632,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20630\/revisions\/20632"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/20631"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20630"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20630"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20630"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}