By Renee Maltezou and Jonathan Saul
ATHENS (Reuters) -An EU warship secured the crew of an oil products tanker on Friday after it was attacked by pirates off Somalia, its operator and a European Union naval mission said, as worries grow over a resurgence of piracy after years of calm.
Just hours earlier, in a separate incident, another vessel successfully outran a pirate skiff in the same area, maritime sources said.
A recent spate of attacks on vessels off the Horn of Africa, including the first involving suspected Somali pirates in a year, has revived concerns over the security of shipping lanes used to transport critical energy and goods to global markets.
Pirates boarded the Malta-flagged products tanker Hellas Aphrodite on Thursday.
The EU’s anti-piracy naval mission, Atalanta, deployed a frigate to the area, reaching the vessel on Friday afternoon, the tanker’s Greek operator, Latsco, said, adding that a navy team was on board to secure it.
The crew had taken refuge in a safe room during the pirate attack from where they had retained control of the vessel.
“The crew, composed of 24 people, is safe and no injuries have been reported. Throughout the incident, they remained in the citadel in direct contact with Atalanta,” the EU mission said.
The pirates most likely left the vessel before the warship arrived at the scene, maritime security sources said.
WORRIES OVER SOMALI PIRACY RESURGENCE
In a separate incident on Friday, a liquefied natural gas tanker was approached by a speedboat close to the area where the Hellas Aphrodite was targeted, an official with maritime security firm Diaplous told Reuters.
The Marshall Islands-flagged LNG tanker, which maritime security sources identified as Al Thumama, reported an approach by a small craft with three people on board, British maritime risk management group Vanguard and maritime security sources said.
The master reported that the tanker, which was en route from Ras Laffan, Qatar to Swinoujscie, Poland via the Cape of Good Hope, outran the speedboat, the sources said.
The vessel’s operator, Japan’s NYK LNG Shipmanagement, declined to comment.
Though once a major menace around the Gulf of Aden and Indian Ocean, Somali pirate gangs have been relatively inactive in recent years following a coordinated crackdown by Western naval forces and military action targeting their onshore bases.
More recently, Yemen’s Iran-affiliated Houthi militia has posed a greater threat to shipping through the Red Sea, which leads into the Gulf of Aden. The group first launched attacks on commercial ships in November 2023 in solidarity with Palestinians over Israel’s war in Gaza.
While the Houthis have agreed to a truce on targeting U.S.-linked shipping, many shipping companies remain wary of resuming voyages through those waters.
That diversion of maritime vessels has pushed traffic south along East Africa’s Indian Ocean coastline, creating opportunities for attacks by Somali gangs, maritime security sources said.
(Reporting by Renee Maltezou, Jonathan Saul, Yannis Souliotis, Alexander Winning and Yuka Obayashi; Editing by Joe Bavier)
