Vietnam-flagged tanker released by pirates

A Vietnam-flagged tanker was hijacked by gun-toting pirates who stole part of the vessel’s cargo of oil before releasing the ship and its crew safely, an official said Thursday. The MT Sunrise 689 went missing en route from Singapore to the Vietnamese port of Quang Tri, falling out of contact shortly after it left port a week ago. “The Sunrise and its 18 crew members were released early this morning by pirates who took around a third of cargo on board,” Nguyen Nhat, the director of Vietnam’s Maritime Department, told AFP Thursday.

The pirates broke the communication system, robbed the oil and goods on board.

Captain Nguyen Quoc

Southeast Asia has seen a spate of daring hijackings this year, centred on the Strait of Malacca running between Malaysia, Indonesia and Singapore. The incidents have fanned fears that the region’s busy shipping lanes - plagued by piracy for centuries - could once again become a problem area after an earlier surge in sea banditry was largely suppressed by regional navies. The Sunrise, which belongs to a shipbuilding company in the northern Vietnam port of Hai Phong, was carrying more than 5,200 tons of oil and 18 crew, state media reported. In recent years, global concern over piracy has focused on attacks by trigger-happy Somali pirates off East Africa. An international naval effort has virtually stamped out that threat, but Southeast Asian piracy attacks have crept back up, according to the International Maritime Bureau.

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