PortandTerminal.com, December 28, 2019
LAGOS, NIGERIA – Dryad Global has issued an alert that the LNG LOKOJA en route to Bonny, Nigeria was attacked in transit on December 28th.
The vessel is understood to have come under attack from a single speedboat with 10 armed men on-board. The pirates are understood to have opened fire on the vessel.
The vessel conducted evasive manoeuvres causing the attack to fail. The LOKOJA has since been met by the Nigerian Patrol vessel DEFENDER VI and is continuing under escort.
Earlier in December, in a separate incident, nineteen crew members of a tanker vessel identified as Nave Constellation have been kidnapped by pirates. The attack occurred while the vessel was sailing around 100 nautical miles off Bonny Island. They were later released unharmed.
In yet another incident this month, on December 15, twenty crew members were kidnapped from a Marshall Islands-flagged oil tanker off Benin, marking “the largest kidnapping event in West Africa within 2019”.