Safmarine containership released after being hijacked

The 25-member crew of the Safmarine Kuramo are reported to be safe after the vessel was boarded by armed hijackers off the coast of Nigeria Friday night.    A containership belonging to Maersk Line subsidiary Safmarine was briefly hijacked off the coast of Nigeria late on Friday night.
   While en route from Pointe Noire, Congo to Port Onne, Nigeria, the Safmarine Kuramo was boarded by armed pirates, but the 25-member crew were able to send a distress signal to the Maritime and Port Authority of Singapore (MPA) and the Nigerian Navy. The crew consisted of eight nationals from the Philippines, eight from South Africa, five from India, and two each from the United Kingdom and Thailand.
   According to MPA, Nigerian authorities were able to negotiate the release of the vessel and its crew on Saturday, at which point it was brought to anchor in the Bonny River delta near Port Onne.
   Local news outlet NAN said the Nigerian Navy immediately dispatched a warship and attack gunboats, which scared the would-be hijackers off.
   “On Feb. 5 at about 08:00 hours; Safmarine Kuramo was attacked by sea pirates about 60 nautical miles off the coast of Bonny Island (in Rivers) Fairway Bouy,” Olusegun Soyemi, executive officer of the Nigerian Navy Ship (NNS) Pathfinder, reportedly told journalists at a Sunday briefing in Port Onne.
   “We got may-day distress call that the ship was boarded by unconfirmed number of sea pirates after entering the nation’s territorial waters. We immediately dispatched a warship (NNS Centenary) and attack gunboats led by Navy Capt. Chiedozie Okehie of the Eastern Naval Command to rescue the situation.
   “The sea pirates apparently on sighting advancing naval troops fled the scene for fear of being arrested by our operatives. The operation was largely successful as all 25 foreign crew members, including the captain, are safe and unhurt, while cargo onboard the ship is intact,” added Soyemi.
   Soyemi said the rescue was successful, in part, because the captain and crew of the Safmarine Kuramo hid in the vessel’s engine room – also known as the citadel – and continued to send information to the Navy despite repeated attempts by the hijackers to break into the citadel.
   “We are very grateful when the navy came onboard because at some point we had thought the pirates would take us hostage,” said Zetta Gous-Conradie, the South African captain of the Safmarine Kuramo. “The heat was stifling because the temperature was very hot at the citadel, and at some point my crew members and I had thought we would suffocate and die.”
   Soyemi said that Nigeria has already begun investigating the incident in an attempt to determine who carried out the attempted hijacking.
   According to ocean carrier schedule and capacity database BlueWater Reporting, the 2,500-TEU Safmarine Kuramo is flagged in Singapore and serves on Maersk and Safmarine’s WAF1 loop between the Mediterranean and West Africa. The WAF1 operates with seven vessels, four from Maersk and three from Safmarine, on a full port rotation of Algeciras, Tangiers, Pointe Noire, Onne, Libreville, Takoradi, San Pedro, and Algeciras.