\n The Horn of Africa country was once notorious for its pirate raids and ransom attacks but incidents have become less frequent [Getty]<\/p>\n
The European Union’s anti-piracy naval force secured a ship on Friday that had been attacked off the coast of Somalia.<\/p>\n
Armed assailants had attacked the vessel, run by Greek firm Latsco Marine Management, as it was travelling to South Africa from India on Thursday with 24 crew members aboard.<\/p>\n
The Horn of Africa country was once notorious for its pirate raids and ransom attacks but incidents have become less frequent.<\/p>\n
The pirates abandoned the merchant tanker after an “early show of force”, an EU Naval Force statement said.<\/p>\n
“The crew, composed of 24 people, is safe and no injuries have been reported.”<\/p>\n
An intense search for the pirates, who are believed to still be in the area, is underway, the naval force said, adding that they will be legally prosecuted if captured.<\/p>\n
The United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations (UKMTO) Centre earlier said the boat, the Hellas Aphrodite, was approached from the stern by a small vessel.<\/p>\n
There was no security on board at the time of the attack, according to maritime news agency Lloyd’s List.<\/p>\n
The attack comes days after a failed attempt to board the MV Stolt Sagaland tanker off the coast of Somalia.<\/p>\n
Four people attempted to seize the ship on Monday, according to a bulletin from the French Maritime Information Cooperation and Awareness Center (MICA).<\/p>\n
The day before, a small boat approached the FV Intertuna Tres, but moved away after the ship sounded its sirens, according to MICA.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Horn of Africa country was once notorious for its pirate raids and ransom attacks but incidents have…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":556602,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5174],"tags":[2000,299,5187,174580,65787,20527,65163],"class_list":{"0":"post-556601","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-eu","8":"tag-eu","9":"tag-europe","10":"tag-european","11":"tag-horn-of-africa","12":"tag-piracy","13":"tag-pirates","14":"tag-somalia"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115512433940239644","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/556601","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=556601"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/556601\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/556602"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=556601"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=556601"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=556601"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}