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European Union and Indian Navies have captured a ship used by pirates somalia To seize a Malta-flagged tanker, the European Union force said on Wednesday.
The Iranian fishing vessel named Issamohamadi was abandoned off the coast of Somalia following the seizure last week of the Hellas Aphrodite, which was carrying a load of gasoline from India to South Africa. The pirates used the Issamohamadi, a type of conventional ship known in the Persian Gulf as a dhow, as a “mother ship” for a series of attacks limited to the capture of the tanker.
A team from the ESPS Victoria, a Spanish warship, boarded the dhow and said that Issamohamadi’s original crew on board the ship was “in good condition, safe and free”. Iran has not accepted the seizure of the ship.
“The pirate group’s operations in the area have been definitively disrupted,” the EU’s naval force Operation Atalanta said in a statement. EU forces have “gathered evidence and intelligence from the incident, which will be presented, along with evidence collected on board the merchant tanker Hellas Aphrodite, to support the legal prosecution of the perpetrators.”
piracy Violence on the Somali coast peaked in 2011, when 237 attacks were recorded. According to the Oceans Beyond Piracy Monitoring Group, Somali piracy in the region that year cost the world economy about $7 billion, of which $160 million was paid in ransom.
Increasing international naval patrols, a strengthening central government in Somalia, and other efforts reduced the threat.
However, due to the insecurity created by the Israel-Hamas war in the Gaza Strip and Yemen’s Houthi rebels launching attacks in the Red Sea corridor, attacks by Somali pirates have resumed more rapidly than last year. The Houthis have indicated that they have halted their attacks due to the unstable ceasefire in Gaza.
According to the International Maritime Bureau, seven incidents were recorded off Somalia in 2024. So far this year, several fishing boats have been seized by Somali pirates. The Hellas Aphrodite is the first commercial ship seized by pirates off Somalia since May 2024.