Yemen Monitor/ Marib/ Exclusive:
EU Naval Forces successfully freed a crew of 24 sailors who were held in a fortified safe room on a Maltese-flagged oil tanker, after it was attacked by pirates off the Somali coast. The incident highlights the increasing navigation risks in the region linked to ships being diverted away from the Red Sea, which has been troubled by Houthi attacks.
The tanker “Hellas Aphrodite”, which was en-route from India to South Africa carrying a cargo of gasoline, was seized last Thursday.
The attack began with intense fire from machine guns and RPGs before the armed pirates managed to board the vessel.
The ship’s crew managed to take refuge inside the fortified safe room (citadel), maintaining their safety and communicating with the EU’s anti-piracy mission “Operation Atalanta”.
The European forces of Operation Atalanta stated: Special forces teams from the Spanish warship “ESPS Victoria”, affiliated with Atalanta, intervened, arriving at the tanker’s location on Friday.
The EU mission reported that a “show of force” by the naval forces, using helicopters and surveillance drones, prompted the pirates to abandon the tanker before the warship’s arrival, and the crew was found safe.
For two years, repeated Houthi (Iran-backed) attacks on commercial and military vessels in the Red Sea and the Bab el-Mandeb strait have caused a significant portion of global shipping, particularly that bound for the Suez Canal, to divert to the Cape of Good Hope route via southern and eastern Africa and the Indian Ocean.
