Armed men kidnap eight sailors, a member of the crew wounded by a bullet.
During an attack on a Greek tanker by unknown armed individuals, eight sailors were kidnapped on the morning of Tuesday, December 31,
2019. In a press release from the Greek Ministry of Shipping, these gunmen attacked a boat anchored in the port of Limbe.
As a result, Jeune Afrique reports, a Greek member of the crew of 28 sailors was injured in the ankle by the ricochet of a bullet during the
attack. He was transferred to a local hospital, according to the Greek port police press office, which is following up on cases involving Greek
ships. More specifically, the eight sailors who suffered this assault are of Greek (five, including the captain), Filipino (two) and Ukrainian (one)
nationalities.
“The Minister of Merchant Marine, Yannis Plakiotakis, has been briefed and is following the matter closely with the Greek foreign ministry and
the tanker management company,” the statement said. The shipowner is the company “Eastern Mediterranean Athens”, which has its
headquarters in Athens, the Greek capital, according to the port police. Considered the new epicenter of global maritime piracy along the
west coast of Africa, the areas surrounding the Gulf of Guinea is under increasing attack from boats and kidnappings for ransom.
Procedure
The modus operandi of these pirates consists of hijacking the ships for several days, the time to loot the bunkers. It was then that they asked
for large ransoms before releasing the crew. Recently in Togo, similar events took place there. In November 2019, an armed group stormed
another Greek oil tanker, the Elka Aristotle, about ten nautical miles off the coast of the capital, Lome, and captured four sailors.
Three of them were released on December 13, but the fourth died in captivity. An investigation is still ongoing. But according to a statement
from the tanker owner, “it appears that his death was not due to the actions of the abductors but to an illness.”
By Subiru Madina
