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| The ship was sailing through the most dangerous sea in the world for piracy when it was attacked |
Armed men killed an Azerbaijani sailor and abducted 15 Turkish crew members from a Turkish cargo ship off the coast of Nigeria, Turkey’s Anadolu news agency reported Sunday.
That left three crew members to sail the Liberian-flagged
Mozart owned by a Turkish company, the state agency said.
Turkish news channel NTV spoke to a sailor still on board
who said several crew members were wounded.
The Mozart had been en route from the Nigeria’s economic
capital Lagos to Cape Town in South Africa when it was boarded on Saturday. It
has now arrived at Port-Gentil in nearby Gabon.
“We have established the necessary contacts with all the
countries concerned for the release of our nationals,” Turkish Foreign Minister
Mevlut Cavusoglu said on NTV.
“The bandits, the pirates who abducted our citizens have not
contacted us yet. These pirates make contact at some point to communicate their
demands,” he added.
Earlier, a voice from the Mozart — purportedly that of the
new captain — had said on a recording posted on Twitter: “I do not know where I
am heading. The pirates cut the cables, only the radar is working.”
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan spoke by telephone to
the new captain and was following events closely, his office said.
Ten sailors who were taken hostage from a Turkish vessel off
West Africa were released in August 2019.
Pirate attacks on ships worldwide jumped 20 percent last
year driven by a record spate of kidnappings off West Africa, the International
Maritime Bureau said last week.
A total of 195 incidents of piracy and armed robbery were
reported, up from 162 in 2019.
Out of 135 sailors abducted globally last year, 130 were
recorded in the Gulf of Guinea — the highest ever number of crew members
kidnapped in the area stretching thousands of kilometres (miles) from Senegal
to Angola.
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