DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — The European Union and the Indian Navy have seized a ship used by pirates off the coast Somalia on seize a Maltese-flagged tankerEU forces said on Wednesday.
An Iranian fishing vessel named Issamohamadi was abandoned off the coast of Somalia after the Hellas Aphrodite, which was carrying a cargo of petrol from India to South Africa, was seized by them last week. The pirates used the Issamohamadi, a type of traditional ship known in the Persian Gulf as a dhow, as a “mother ship” for a series of attacks that culminated in the capture of the tanker.
A team from the ESPS Victoria, a Spanish frigate, boarded the dhow and said the original Issamohamadi crew on board were in “good condition, safe and free”. Iran has not acknowledged the seizure of the ship.
The pirate group “operating in the area has been definitively disrupted,” the EU naval force’s Operation Atalanta said in a statement. EU forces “gathered evidence and intelligence on the incident which, together with the evidence collected on board the Merchant Tanker Hellas Aphrodite, will be submitted to support the prosecution of the perpetrators”.
Piracy off the coast of Somalia peaked in 2011, when 237 attacks were reported. Somali piracy in the region cost the world economy about $7 billion that year, with $160 million paid in ransoms, according to the monitoring group Oceans Beyond Piracy.
Increasing international maritime patrols, strengthening the central government in Somalia and other efforts have reduced the threat.
However, attacks by Somali pirates do continued at a greater pace over the past year, partly due to the insecurity caused by Yemen’s Houthi rebels attacks in the Red Sea Corridor over war between Israel and Hamas in the Gaza Strip. The Houthis indicated that they did they have stopped their attacks while a shaky ceasefire is in place in Gaza.
In 2024, seven incidents were reported off Somalia, according to the International Maritime Bureau. So far this year several fishing boats were seized from Somali pirates. Hellas Aphrodite represents the first commercial ship seized by pirates off Somalia since May 2024.
