A firefight broke out between a security team onboard an MSC boxship and pirates off Kenya on Friday morning, TradeWinds has learned.
The incident involving the 1,399-teu MSC Ayala (built 1985) came shortly after a dhow was hijacked and is feared to be already heading towards the Gulf of Aden for use in attacks on other ships.
Pirates in one skiff opened fire on the Panama-flagged MSC Ayala a mere 12 miles from the Kenyan port of Mombasa in the early hours of Friday morning local time.
The hijacking attempt was, however, repelled by a private embarked security team onboard the MSC-chartered vessel, TradeWinds has been told.
There are no reports of any injuries to the unspecified number of crew members onboard. The extent of any damage to the ship, if any, is also unknown.
A spokesperson at the ship’s Hong Kong-based manager MSC Ship Management HK was not available for comment on Friday morning.
The incident comes exactly one week after MSC saw another of its chartered units assaulted in the Gulf of Aden. The 1,560-teu MSC Sudan, which is owned by Greece’s Costamare, was set upon in the Internationally Recommended Transit Corridor (IRTC) on Friday but managed to evade hijacking.
Geneva-based owner and operator MSC has had previous run-ins with Somalia pirates. Most recently its 2,415-teu owned MSC Peggy (built 1984) managed to escape hijacking after coming under fire off the coast of Madagascar in May.
In May last year the 6,400-teu, MSC-chartered boxship MSC Stella (built 2004) was threatened by pirates whilst in a convoy transiting the Gulf of Aden.
Friday’s attack also comes a matter of weeks after MSC teamed up with liner rivals Maersk Line and CMA CGM in an effort to combat piracy off Somalia. The three agreed in late September to share information on anti-piracy measures and policies in order to reduce the risk of attacks on their ships.
Soren Andersen, head of vessel management at Maersk Line, told TradeWinds at the time: “The monsoon season is ending so we are concerned we will see more attacks and incidents.
“I can’t go into details about what we can do as we don’t want the pirates to know what we are doing.”
TradeWinds has also learned that a dhow named Al Nasser was hijacked on Thursday a short distance from the Yemeni island of Socotra. Worryingly the vessel is reportedly already steaming towards the IRTC with authorities concerned that it is to be used as a mothership from which to stage attacks on other ships.
There are also unconfirmed reports that two Taiwanese fishing vessels were hijacked off the Seychelles on Thursday. If the reports prove accurate there will once again be a worry that the boats will be used as motherships by their captors.
