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The ship and its 23 crew members are returning home two months after being held by Somali pirates in the Indian Ocean
Published : 10 May 2024, 11:48 PM
MV Abdullah, the Bangladeshi-flagged ship released by Somali pirates after a month in captivity, has arrived in the Bay of Bengal.
The ship and its 23 crew members are returning home two months after being held by the pirates in the Indian Ocean.
The vessel was near Sri Lanka on Thursday night, according to the Maritime Traffic website, which monitors ship movement.
The website put the likely date of its arrival in Kutubdia to Tuesday,
But Mizanul Islam, a spokesperson for Kabir Group, the parent company of the vessel’s owner SR Shipping, said on Thursday that the ship may reach the island on Monday.
It will unload in Kutubdia some of the 56,000 tonnes of stones it is carrying from the UAE and the loading may take two days, according to him.
The ship will then come to Chattogram port and unload the rest of the cargo at the outer anchorage, he said.
It has not been decided yet whether the crew members would leave the ship in Kutubdia and come to Chattogram, or would they arrive in the port city by the ship.
On Mar 12, Somali pirates seized control of the MV Abdullah and took the 23 sailors on board hostage. The vessel was transporting 55,000 tonnes of coal from Mozambique to the United Arab Emirates at the time.
After capturing the vessel, the pirates moved it to the Somali coast and regularly changed its position. Nine days after the vessel was hijacked, the pirates contacted the owners through a third party and then released the ship with the crew a month after the capture.
MV Abdullah resumed its journey to Bangladesh on May 1 after refuelling at Fujairah port in the UAE. It earlier unloaded the coal at Mina Saqr port in the UAE and took the stones.
