Ship illegally boarded in Gulf of Aden off Yemen

Unidentified individuals illegally boarded a tanker in the Gulf of Aden, maritime security agencies reported on Friday, with Yemen’s coast guard saying it was captured by Somali pirates.

The United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations (UKMTO) said the incident took place 65 nautical miles south of Mukalla, a major city on Yemen’s south coast.

“Military authorities have reported that the vessel was boarded by unauthorised personnel whilst transiting east in the Gulf of Aden,” the agency posted on X.

Yemen’s coast guard said the ship, a chemical tanker named the Asana, was captured by “a group of Somali pirates” and was heading southeast, towards Somalia.

Ambrey, a maritime security company, said the Tanzania-flagged ship did not have an armed security team aboard, and added that a South Korean navy “vessel was en route to the tanker to provide assistance”.

The Maritime Security Centre Indian Ocean (MSCIO), the information service for the EU’s anti-piracy naval mission in the area, said it was “investigating the incident and monitoring the vessel”.

The shipping route between Yemen and the Horn of Africa, which links the Indian Ocean to the Red Sea, is one of the busiest in the world, with sea traffic experiencing significant disruption in the Strait of Hormuz due to the Middle East war.

The Joint Maritime Information Centre (JMIC), run by a massive 47-nation coalition deployed in the northern Indian Ocean to fight the Horn of Africa’s longtime pirate menace, raised its alert level to “severe” in early May, its second-highest.

It came after a series of attacks by Somali pirates who seized several vessels off the coast of Yemen and off the coast of Puntland, a state in northeastern Somalia.