NEW DELHI, AUGUST 22: Armed pirates have seized two foreign-flagged commercial vessels carrying twenty-two Indian crew members in separate high-seas attacks near the Arabian Peninsula and the Horn of Africa, though diplomatic authorities confirmed all nationals remain unharmed.
The Ministry of External Affairs confirmed the back-to-back incidents occurred off the coasts of Yemen and Somalia, marking a sharp escalation in regional water security risks. Sixteen Indian seafarers were operating aboard the Eritrea-flagged oil-products tanker MT Sibu 1 when six armed assailants boarded the ship in the Gulf of Aden, approximately thirty nautical miles from Yemen, before diverting its course toward Somali waters.
In a separate assault days earlier, eight armed men hijacked the Cameroon-flagged cargo vessel MV Lutuf roughly four nautical miles off Mareeyo along the Puntland coast of Somalia. The ten-member crew onboard included six Indian citizens alongside nationals from Serbia, Georgia, and Turkey.
“From what we have gathered so far, these twenty-two Indian citizens — our seafarers — are safe,” MEA spokesperson Randhir Jaiswal asserted. He maintained that Indian diplomatic representatives remain in continuous contact with local authorities to guarantee the protection and return of the crew.
The Indian Embassy in Kenya affirmed it reached out directly to official agencies in Somalia to oversee the welfare of the captured sailors across both commercial vessels.
Somali officials noted that the cargo ship Lutuf carried Turkish military supplies, communication assets, and satellite hardware destined for a security facility in Mogadishu at the time of the takeover.
The successive strikes signal a alarming revival of piracy operations across the western Indian Ocean, threatening international shipping corridors that had experienced historic lows in criminal activity following years of naval patrols.
