BANDARBEYLA, SOMALIA – The pirates who held the tanker MT Eureka for 150 days ran it aground at Hulcaanood in the Bandarbeyla district of Karkaar on Tuesday 29 September, put its twelve crew, eight Egyptians and four Indians, ashore and escaped, reportedly after setting the ship on fire. Residents received the sailors and handed them to the district administration for transfer to the Puntland government. Egypt announced their release on Wednesday and credited its foreign minister’s contacts with Somali and Yemeni officials, and its statement named no Puntland force and said nothing about a ransom. On the same Tuesday, elsewhere on the Karkaar coast, Puntland’s maritime police retook the Honour 25, where five crew had been shot dead.
The MT Eureka’s Five Months Off Bandarbeyla
The MT Eureka is a Togo-flagged tanker built in 2006 and registered to a company in the Hamriyah Free Zone of Sharjah. It left Fujairah on 24 March carrying about 2,800 tonnes of diesel, and on Saturday 2 May nine armed men boarded it off the coast of Yemen’s Shabwah province, an attack Yemen’s coast guard reported at the time. Ship-tracking records show it crossed the Gulf of Aden with its transponder off for long stretches and dropped anchor about four nautical miles off Bandarbeyla, still fully laden, within a week of the seizure.
By mid-May the gang holding the MT Eureka was demanding $10 million. The wife of one Egyptian engineer said her husband had been allowed a single short telephone call, in which he described hard conditions and asked for urgent help, and that the ship’s company had promised the families it would resolve the case. An attempt to release the ship in June collapsed when the pirates walked away from an agreed deal and raised their price, and by 25 June they were threatening to kill the Egyptian sailors if the ransom was not paid within their deadline. Accounts in May and June differed on how many Egyptians were aboard, and Cairo settled the number at eight in August.
Meanwhile the MT Eureka became one of six ships held off Somalia’s northeastern coast this year, in a year that has seen fifteen attacks off Somalia, the most since 2013. The Honour 25 was taken on 21 April, eleven days before the Eureka, and the Sward on 26 April. Next came the Asana on 17 July, the MV Lutuf on 17 August and the Sibu 1 on 20 August. The families of the MT Eureka crew spent the summer on the telephone to Cairo, and the Egyptian foreign ministry said it kept them informed through its embassy in Mogadishu and spoke to them daily from June.
What Happened at Hulcaanood
Reports from Hulcaanood on Tuesday said the group holding the MT Eureka ran the ship aground on the shore there and abandoned it after learning that Puntland’s forces planned to attack, and that the crew had been landed on the beach. Local residents took in the twelve sailors and handed them to the Bandarbeyla district administration, which was to pass them to the Puntland government. The same account said the tanker had been badly damaged, that the pirates set it on fire before they left, and that some of the cargo had been taken off before the fire. A second account put the gang at about thirty armed men, said they escaped inland with their weapons, and said most of the diesel had already been pumped off and sold.
Puntland’s information ministry said the Puntland Maritime Police Force had recovered the MT Eureka as the pirates fled towards the coast, and that “PMPF forces continue to pursue the individuals involved and are conducting further operations to apprehend those who escaped.” No arrests connected to the MT Eureka had been announced by Wednesday afternoon, and Puntland had not said where the twelve sailors were being kept or when they would be flown out. Every account agrees that the crew came off the ship unharmed.
Hulcaanood lies on the Karkaar coast within the Bandarbeyla district, the stretch where the MT Eureka had anchored in May, about four nautical miles from the shore of Bandarbeyla town itself. Dharinbaar, where Puntland’s maritime police boarded the Honour 25 the same day, is in the same district. Puntland said the pirates on the Honour 25 killed five crew, three Pakistanis, an Indian and a Myanmar national, before its operation began, while two Pakistani survivors described the shooting as coming during the clash. The gang on the MT Eureka left its ship without a fight, and its twelve hostages came ashore at Hulcaanood alive.
What Cairo Said About the Release
The Egyptian statement of Wednesday 30 September, delivered by the foreign ministry spokesman, Nader Zaki, said the release followed sustained high-level contacts by Foreign Minister Badr Abdelatty with Somali and Yemeni officials and a directive from President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi. It instructed the embassy in Mogadishu to receive the eight Egyptians, check on their condition and fly them home on the earliest available plane. It did not name the Puntland Maritime Police Force, whose approach the reports from Hulcaanood gave as the reason the gang left, and it did not say whether any money changed hands. The ministry said its consular section had kept the sailors’ families informed throughout the five months, and that it had worked with the authorities in Yemen, whose waters the ship was crossing when it was boarded, as well as with Somalia.
Egypt had worked through Mogadishu from the start, and on 21 May Somalia’s ambassador in Cairo and permanent representative to the Arab League, Ali Abdi Aware, told Egypt’s deputy foreign minister that Somalia was greatly concerned and in constant contact with all relevant parties. Three months later, on 21 August, Badr Abdelatty said daily contacts were being maintained, cited recent talks with Somalia’s foreign ministry, and listed contacts with Yemen and with local communities where the sailors were held. On 7 September he pressed his Somali counterpart at the Arab League in Cairo to speed the release.
The federal government had issued no statement on the MT Eureka by Wednesday afternoon. A day before Egypt’s statement, the Puntland Maritime Police Force had boarded the Honour 25 by force and was pursuing the gang that left the MT Eureka, and the release came four days after the same force freed the Sibu 1. The eight Egyptians were due to be handed to their embassy in Mogadishu while Puntland’s forces were still searching the Karkaar coast for the men who had held them.
Five Ships Out and the Asana Still Held
With the MT Eureka and the Honour 25 out of pirate hands, five of the six ships seized or brought to the coast since April are free. The cement carrier Sward was released near Garacad on 11 September after a ransom, and the MV Lutuf left the Nugaal coast on 29 August in a release Villa Somalia credited to Turkish and Somali forces and Puntland’s security ministry said was bought, after it monitored calls between federal officials and the hijackers. On 25 September Puntland’s maritime police took the Sibu 1 by force and brought its twenty crew out unharmed, though several of the fifteen prisoners escaped from a convoy near Jariiban two days later.
The operation on the Honour 25 ended the week with five hostages dead, the first killed by Somali pirates in more than a decade. The Asana, seized on 17 July, is the one ship of the six still held. On 6 September the federal foreign ministry described piracy as a problem off the coast of Puntland and claimed the leadership of every maritime security arrangement in the country, and on 13 September President Said Abdullahi Deni asked the Security Council for cooperation against piracy that works directly with Puntland’s own forces. Four days earlier he had told the people of Xaafuun that the pirates would be fought the way Puntland fought Daesh in the Calmiskaad mountains, and counted five hijacked ships off Puntland’s shores.
Puntland’s forces moved on three of the six ships in the last week of September, and the gang on the MT Eureka left before they arrived. Egypt spent five months working the case through the embassy in Mogadishu, the Arab League and the Somali ambassador in Cairo, and the MT Eureka crew came ashore at Hulcaanood on the Karkaar coast. Residents there handed them to the Bandarbeyla district administration, and the Puntland Maritime Police Force was still pursuing the gang that had held them.
