Two crew members were kidnapped from a CMA CGM-operated containership off Nigeria on Monday – the same day pirates kidnapped six crew members from the tanker Puli more than 100 miles from Port Harcourt, Nigeria (See ‘Another tanker a piracy victim in the Gulf of Guinea’ FTWO April 12).
The ship was identified as the Liberian-flagged CMA CGM Turquoise, a 4 360-TEU containership chartered by the French shipping company.
According to the International Maritime Bureau (IMB), 11 armed pirates boarded the containership approximately 30 nautical miles southwest of Bayelsa Coast, Nigeria.
This saw the ship’s master activating the ship security alert system (SSAS) and the crew – apart from two members - mustering in the citadel. When the crew left the citadel some 12 hours later it was discovered that the two crew members had been kidnapped.
This, as we noted in a previous issue, is part of the rapid growth of piracy in the Gulf of Guinea – where 23 crew members were kidnapped for ransom in the first three months of 2016, according to the maritime intelligence agency, Dryad Maritime (See ‘Maritime kidnap, ransom and sabotage surge in Gulf of Guinea’ FTWO April 13).
