Cargo Business Newswire

Thursday, April 24, 2014

Oil tanker raided, pirates kidnap 3 crew

Armed pirates raided an oil tanker off the coast of Malaysia and took three crew members with them, according to Malaysian maritime officials.

"We are very concerned," said Noel Choong, head of the International Maritime Bureau's Malaysia-based Piracy Reporting Centre. He said the ship was hijacked while sailing near Port Klang.

"It's the first time this has happened so far north in the Malacca Strait, and the first time they have kidnapped the crew. It's not an area where we have seen the modus operandi of ships hijacked for their cargo," Choong told Reuters.

Eight Indonesian pirates in a fishing boat boarded the Naniwa Maru No.1 at 1 a.m. local time on Tuesday of off the coast of west Malaysia, the Malaysian Maritime Enforcement Agency said.

The pirates pumped about 3 million liters of diesel from the tanker into two waiting ships and departed with three Indonesian crewmembers, including the captain and chief engineer, the agency said.

For more of the Reuters story: chicagotribune.com