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At­tack­ers fir­ing ma­chine guns and rock­et-pro­pelled grenades board­ed a tanker car­ry­ing gaso­line off the coast of So­ma­lia on Thurs­day, au­thor­i­ties said, like­ly the lat­est as­sault by resur­gent So­ma­li pi­rates op­er­at­ing in the re­gion.

A se­ries of re­cent at­tacks at­trib­uted to So­ma­li pi­rates had put ship­pers on edge even be­fore Thurs­day’s seizure of the Mal­ta-flagged Hel­las Aphrodite. The cap­ture of the ves­sel rep­re­sents the first com­mer­cial ship tak­en by pi­rates off So­ma­lia in over a year and raised fears of more as­saults.

“This is an un­prece­dent­ed se­ries of events tar­get­ing mer­chant ves­sels since the hi­jack­ing of the MV Basilisk in May 2024,” France’s Mar­itime In­for­ma­tion Co­op­er­a­tion and Aware­ness Cen­tre warned. “Pi­rates are ag­ile, de­ter­mined, move be­tween ar­eas and have re­al reach.”