A group of Somali pirates have abandoned a UAE-owned vessel they seized last month after failing to use it to attack other vessels, Puntland officials told AFP.
The group of 11 pirates seized the Fahad-4 in late April, about 10 nautical miles off the coast of Dhinowda in northeastern Somalia.
There was no immediate word on the fate of the crew on board the vessel, which was carrying a cargo of lemons, and the Somali government has not yet commented publicly on the vessel’s whereabouts.
Puntland security officials said the pirates set off from an area near the port of Garacad, about 600km north of the capital Mogadishu.
After seizing the vessel, the pirates reportedly used it to attack other vessels in Somali waters.
One of the officials told AFP that the group finally abandoned the ship on May 4, after running low on supplies and failing to carry out other attacks due to increased vigilance by ships sailing off the Somali coast in recent weeks.
The incident comes amid growing concerns about a resurgence of piracy off Somalia, after years of declining maritime threats in the world’s busiest shipping lane.
The Joint Maritime Information Centre (JMIC), which monitors maritime security in the Indian Ocean, said the piracy threat had been raised to “severe” after a series of attacks on commercial vessels.
Maritime monitors also said several recently hijacked vessels were still in the hands of pirates, including the Barbados-flagged tanker Honour 25, which was hijacked off the coast of Puntland on April 21, and the Syrian-flagged Sward.
Elsewhere in the Gulf of Aden, pirates also hijacked the Togolese-flagged oil tanker Eureka before heading towards the Somali coast.
The groups behind the attacks are still not officially known. Armed fishermen and groups linked to ISIS and al-Qaeda have been implicated in previous hijackings.
