A Sri Lankan trawler, with six crew members on board, was hijacked by suspected Somali pirates on Sunday. “According to our information, they were captured by Somali pirates,” said Gayan Wickramasuriya, the Sri Lankan navy spokesperson. He clarified that the Lorenzo Putha-4 had been hijacked on Saturday some 840 nautical miles southeast of the Somali capital, Mogadishu.
Since November 2023, Yemen’s Houthi rebels, supported by Iran, have increased missile and drone attacks off the coast of Yemen, saying they target ships linked to Israel in “solidarity” with the Palestinians in the shelled Gaza Strip. and besieged by the Israeli army since the bloody attack by the Islamist movement Hamas on Israeli soil on October 7.
These attacks have pushed certain shipowners to suspend passages in the Red Sea, through which up to 12% of world trade normally passes, and to bypass Africa to reach Asia and Europe. International naval forces have also been diverted north from the Gulf of Aden to the Red Sea, sparking fears of a resurgence of pirates exploiting the breach.
“Sri Lanka has alerted the Combined Maritime Forces”, the international anti-piracy coalition, Gayan Wickramasuriya told AFP. He said the Indian Navy had already sent a warship to investigate, while that of Sri Lanka, an island in the Indian Ocean close to India, was preparing a ship to go to the area.