Pirates attacked an oil tanker off the coast of west Africa, killing a Ukrainian officer before escaping with the contents of the ship’s safe, the ship’s owners and Benin’s navy commander said on Tuesday.
Commander Maxime Ahoyo said the officer on the Monrovia-flagged Cancale Star was shot dead when he confronted the pirates after they boarded the vessel in darkness 18 nautical miles (33km) off the coast of Benin.
The tanker’s Latvian captain, Jaroslavs Semenovics, said six or seven pirates had approached the tanker in a speed boat.
“They came on deck, pointed a pistol to the head of one of the sailors, marched him to the cabin,” Semenovics said.
“They asked me to open the safe and they collected all the cash,” he said. He did not say how much was stolen.
The 230m Cancale Star was carrying 89,000m³ of crude from Nigeria’s Niger Delta, the captain said.
The tanker’s owner, Chemikalien Seetransport, said in a statement issued from Germany that the vessel’s chief officer, or second in command, “has tragically lost his life in a piracy attack off the coast of Benin in the early hours of Nov. 24.”
“It is not the chief engineer but the chief officer of the vessel,” said Chemikalien spokesman Cor Radings, contradicting Ahoyo who had earlier identified the Ukrainian officer as the chief engineer.
Medics said four other crew members were wounded in the attack, one seriously.
The multinational crew of 24 includes Russians, Filipinos, Latvians and Ukrainians, Radings said.
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