Saturday, June 12, 2010
SANAA (AFP) — Somali pirates have opened fire on a Yemeni oil tanker in the Red Sea wounding a guard on board, Yemen's interior ministry quoted the coastguard as saying on Saturday.
"The coastguard in the Red Sea said that Somali pirates intercepted an oil tanker near the Bab al-Mandab area and opened fire on it, wounding one of the soldiers" on board as guards, the ministry reported on its website.
It did not say when the attack took place.
Bab al-Mandab strait is a strategic and busy waterway linking the Indian Ocean to the Red Sea, and is navigated by shipping that passed through the Suez Canal.
A team of guards aboard the tanker "confronted" the pirates and "forced them to flee," the ministry website said.
Following the incident the Yemeni oil tanker changed course to the western port of Al-Hudaydah, it added.
Heavily armed pirates using speedboats operate in the Gulf of Aden where they prey on ships, sometimes holding vessels for weeks before releasing them for large ransoms paid by governments or ship-owners.
On May 29, the defence ministry had announced that the Yemeni navy had arrested 13 Somali pirates and liberated a fishing boat and its crew four days after they were seized near the island of Socotra.
On May 18, a Yemeni court sentenced six Somali pirates to death and jailed six others for 10 years each for seizing a Yemeni tanker and killing two crew in April 2009.
Source: AFP