Another mariner killed by pirates off West Africa

The BBC is reporting that another pirate incident in the Gulf of Guinea has ended in the death of a mariner. Details are still thin, but the Panamaian-flagged tankship African Prince was apparently boarded by pirates last week while steaming near Lagos, Nigeria. The pirates took control of the tanker and her crew of 29, but the Ghanaian navy was able to respond to the hijacking. After shadowing the vessel, the Ghanian authorities were able to intercept the African Prince and rescue the crew of Nigerian and Pakistani mariners.

However, all of the pirates managed to escape and one member of the tankship's crew, an unnamed chef, was found dead, having been badly beaten by the boarders. The rest of the crew are helping authorities investigate this incident while heading their vessel back to Nigeria. The African Prince seems to have left Tema, east of Accra, earlier today, under escort from the Nigerian navy. The tankship belongs to the Nigerian National Petroleum Company and is thought to have been transporting some 5000 tonnes of refined oil at the time of the attack.

This murder comes just a week after another seafarer was killed by suspected Nigerian pirates, in similar circumstances: In last week's incident, the tanker Cancale Star was boarded while sailing off Benin (due west of Nigeria and east of Ghana) and, in the course of being aboard, the pirates beat the chief officer so badly that he later died of his injuries. Four other crew were injured, one seriously.

West African pirates kill mariner

MT Cancale Star

(photo: Anthoinette de Jager, vesseltracker.com)

Providing a reminder that piracy is not just a problem off the Horn of Africa comes with the news that pirates boarded a Liberian-flagged, German-operated tanker earlier today. The Cancale Star was attacked by six or seven pirates, according to the tanker's captain, Jarolslavs Semenovics. They boarded the vessel as she was steaming about 18 nautical miles off the coast of Benin, put a gun to the head of a deckhand and gained entry to the ship. They then forced Captain Semenovics to open the ship's safe and emptied it of cash. The attack occurred after nightfall, local time.

At some point during the boarding, the tanker's chief officer was injured by the pirates and later died. Four other crew were also wounded, one seriously. There were 26 crew aboard the tanker at the time of the attack, and some of them managed to grab one of the pirates before the boarders fled in their speedboat. The suspect apparently is from nearby Nigeria, the hub of West Africa piracy, and has been handed over to authorities in Benin.

AFP reports the captain as saying the Cancale Star was carrying crude from Nigeria, but Bloomberg says she was loaded with gasoil from northwest Europe and inbound to the Benin port of Cotonou, where the tanker is now docked. (Gasoil is a European term for No. 2 heating oil and diesel fuel.)

Pirates operating in the Gulf of Guinea have a reputation of being much more violent than their Somali brethren, and though overall incidents of piracy in the region are far below the numbers we see off East Africa, this region is still the second worst for attacks on mariners.