Hijackers have seized three vessels off the coast of Somalia in the past week, including the merchant ship Sward, which was taken over on 26 April while sailing from Egypt to Kenya. The Maritime Security Centre Indian Ocean said all three incidents remain ongoing and warned ships in the area to keep heightened vigilance within 150 nautical miles of the Somali coast between Mogadishu and Hafun where possible.
Sward left the port of Suez in Egypt on 13 April and was bound for Mombasa, Kenya, when pirates captured it about 6 nautical miles from the Somali port town of Garacad. The ship carried 17 crew members, 15 from Syria and two from India. After the hijacking, the pirates steered it toward the coast and anchored it in a remote area near Garacad.
By Tuesday morning, four more armed men had boarded the vessel, bringing the total number of pirates on board to 20. Six armed men and an unarmed interpreter fluent in English and Arabic had boarded after the takeover, and one of the security officials monitoring the case said the interpreter was handling both the crew and the owner of the ship. Another official said the interpreter was in charge.
The Sward seizure came one day after pirates seized a dhow and followed the hijacking of Honour 25 on 21 April. Honour 25 was a motor tanker carrying 18,000 barrels of oil. The flurry of attacks is the sharpest sign yet that piracy around somalia is back on the maritime risk map after years of relative quiet.
Piracy around Somalia peaked in 2011, when 212 attacks were recorded, before international naval coalition efforts cut incidents to just a handful each year by 2014. Attacks began rising again in 2023, and security experts say pirate networks are once again probing the limits of the response.
Jethro Norman said pirate groups are testing the waters again and are better equipped than the last generation, using GPS, satellite communications and hijacked dhow motherships to operate hundreds of miles offshore. He said international naval resources are being diverted to the Red Sea, while Puntland’s Emirati-backed security forces are stretched.
The pressure on shipping is broader than Somalia. Global traffic has been strained by near-total closure of the strait of Hormuz by Iran and by Houthi attacks around Bab el Mandeb, leaving fewer assets available to deal with threats farther south. As those forces are pulled elsewhere, pirate groups have more room to move, and the latest hijackings suggest they know it.