“Somali pirates managed to seize a Marshall Islands-flagged merchant ship Morte Vartv in the Gulf of Aden,” the ministry quoted the Yemeni coast-guard as saying in a statement.
“A foreign ship in charge of repairing a marine cable in the Red Sea received a distress call from the Morte Vartv of being attacked by Somali pirates in the Gulf of Aden,” said the statement. “The Marshall Islands-flagged ship was supposed to sail for Indonesia, but pirates has moved it towards the Somali coasts,” the statement said without specifying the date of the hijack or the number of the ship’s crew.
The Gulf of Aden, off the northern coast of Somalia, has the highest risk of piracy in the world.
About 25,000 ships pass every year through the canal south of Yemen, between the Red Sea and the Arabian Sea.