Pirates have seized an Italian tanker carrying a cargo of diesel fuel in the Gulf of Guinea off Cotonou, the economic capital of Benin in West Africa, the Italian Foreign Ministry said on Sunday, Reuters reports. The ship, the RBD Anema e Core with a crew of 23 on board, was taken in the early hours of Sunday when a number of assailants boarded. Two of the crew are Italians, the others Filipinos and Romanian.
The Foreign Ministry's crisis unit was in contact with Italian maritime officials and with the ship's operators in the southern city of Naples, a spokesman said.
Two Italian ships have been captured in recent months on the other side of the continent in the Indian Ocean, where pirate groups operating from the lawless Horn of Africa have been a scourge of international shipping for a number of years.
Piracy is on the rise in the Gulf of Guinea, although it is not on the scale seen off Somalia, where armed sea-borne gangs are making millions of dollars in ransoms and are becoming increasingly violent.
The Foreign Ministry's crisis unit was in contact with Italian maritime officials and with the ship's operators in the southern city of Naples, a spokesman said.
Two Italian ships have been captured in recent months on the other side of the continent in the Indian Ocean, where pirate groups operating from the lawless Horn of Africa have been a scourge of international shipping for a number of years.
Piracy is on the rise in the Gulf of Guinea, although it is not on the scale seen off Somalia, where armed sea-borne gangs are making millions of dollars in ransoms and are becoming increasingly violent.