Pirates Hijacked Vessel off the Coast of Gabon

Barely some weeks after West and Central African leaders met to discuss the rising case of piracy and insecurity in the Gulf of Guinea, pirates struck again. The new technique really worked perfectly well. The pirates seemingly boarded the Malta-flagged Cotton tanker, carrying a partly loaded cargo of fuel oil, on Monday near Port Gentil, Gabon, in the first reported attack in that region in the past five years, Turkish operator Geden Lines said according to Reuters.

The piracy was on an oil products tanker with 24 crew on board off the Gabon coast, the vessel's operator said on Wednesday. "The company is in contact with the families of the 24 Indian crew members on board and the appropriate authorities have been contacted," Geden Lines said in a statement.

The Gulf of Guinea is really under real and imagined threats with the piracy scourge. It includes Nigeria, Ghana and Cote D'Ivoire as well as Gabon and remains a major source of oil, cocoa and, increasingly, metals for world markets. International navies are not actively engaged in counter-piracy missions in the region.

The anchorage of vessels off West African coastal nations, with little protection makes them readied target for criminals unlike waters off Somalia and the Horn of Africa, where ships can move past at high speed with armed guards on board.

The UN had earlier lauded the efforts of the West African leaders who met in Cameroon on the rising case of piracy and even called for the intervention of a multinational naval force. "The attack occurred around 200 nautical miles (NM) further south than the previous most southerly attack, which was around 160NM southwest of Bonny Island (in Nigeria) on 26 April," security firm AKE said.

"It therefore marks a significant expansion of the geographical range of Gulf of Guinea piracy. It also demonstrates the regional nature of the illegal fuel trade, the supply of which tankers such as Cotton are generally hijacked for."