IMO Says More Than 90 Seafarers Are Held as Piracy Returns to the Gulf of Aden
Six vessels are in pirate hands and attack numbers are at their highest since 2013
The International Maritime Organization has called for action on the return of piracy to the Gulf of Aden, with more than 90 seafarers held captive and six vessels in the hands of pirates and armed robbers.
"We cannot allow the resurgence of piracy in the Gulf of Aden and surrounding waters to go unaddressed," stated IMO Secretary-General Arsenio Dominguez, calling for the immediate and unconditional release of every seafarer being held.
The figures mark a clear break with the past decade. Data held in the organisation's shipping information system records at least 15 attacks since the start of the year, against five in the whole of 2025 and no more than a handful a year since 2013.
The most recent hijacking was that of the tanker Seamull on 20 August. Six armed men boarded her roughly 136 nautical miles east of Al Mukalla in Yemen while she was steering west through the Gulf of Aden, took control and turned the vessel towards Somalia. Three days earlier, on 17 August, eight armed attackers boarded the general cargo ship Lutuf about four nautical miles south of Mareeyo on the Puntland coast. The Cameroon-flagged vessel was retaken at the end of the month by Turkish and Somali forces, in a ten-day operation that destroyed four of the attackers' boats and killed 14 pirates. At least eight crew were on board, one of them a Turkish national, and the ship has resumed her voyage.
Maritime security firms attribute a significant part of the surge to the redeployment of international naval forces towards areas of tension elsewhere in the Middle East, which has thinned the patrol coverage that suppressed Somali piracy through the 2010s.
The organisation's call is directed at four groups at once: pirate networks holding crews, ship operators applying the industry best management practices for maritime security, flag states and coastal states ensuring vessels are adequately prepared, and navies maintaining cooperation at sea. It also points to the regional framework already in place, the Djibouti Code of Conduct and its Jeddah Amendment, as the route through which coastal states can act together.
"No seafarer should face violence, intimidation or exploitation simply for doing their jobs," the Secretary-General stated.
