On March 26, five sailors were reported missing, after their fishing vessel was hijacked by pirates and they were taken as hostages.
What happened?
The Ghanaian fishing vessel ‘Marine 711’ with five sailors including three Koreans, one Ghanaian and a Greek national, are believed to be taken as hostages by Nigerian hijackers.
After taking the sailors as hostages, the vessel was abandoned which was subsequently rescued by the Ghana navy.
One sailor rescued
One crew member was rescued from the abandoned vessel and is receiving medical treatment for traumatic experience. The vessel is currently berthed at the Tema port. The Ghana coast guard retrieved jelly cans, ropes and some live bullets from the vessel.
Statement released
Commodore James Kontoh, the Officer Commanding Eastern Naval Command has assured that they will further intensify surveillance to forestall any such future occurrences.
He further added, “For the past 48 hours, we have had series of attacks which we tried to unravel. It all happened Monday dawn about 03:30 when a speed boat came to the Tema anchorage area and forcefully took over a vessel and started heading towards the Togolese waters until the vessel complained of not having enough fuel to continue the journey”.
Sequence of events
The commander conveyed that the hijackers abandoned the first vessel and subsequently hijacked another tanker and transferred the hostages from the first vessel to the second vessel and headed towards Bayelsa in Nigeria.
Lack of fuel in the tanker made the hijackers adandone the tanker vessel and then hijack the fishing vessel with hostages from both the vessels and headed towards Benin.
Some of the crew members who were not taken as hostages said that they were severely beaten by the pirates before being freed.
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Source: Citifm Online
