It was January 17, 2011 when the attack of Somali pirates on a Greek owned ship happened. The ship is a Cypriot flagged ship and identified in its name MV EAGLE.
The ship was being entered by the pirates after being attacked by shooting it with small arm weapons and firing Rocket Propelled grenade. The incident happened while the vessel was crossing the Gulf of Alden. Their location was said to be 490 nautical miles away in the South of Salalah in Oman.
The vessel has deadweight of 52,163 tonnes with 24 Filipino crews on board. They were on their p(–foul word(s) removed–)age from Aqabar of Jordan going to Paradip of India when the tragic event took place.
After more than 3 months under the hands of the pirates, these Somali pirates and a maritime official finally declared the release of the Greek owned ship. It was announced by the pirates that they have received $6 million in exchange of the vessel’s release as their requested ransom. But according to some other sources, this said ransom could still not be verified.
A pirate who only named himself as Kalif gave his statement to Reuters (journalists) through a phone call from a coastal town of El-Dhanane by Saturday. He said that they have already received their $6 million as ransom. He also added that the ship has just “started to sail away from our zone with a warship”.
The conflict which happened 2 decades now in Somalia gave ways for pirate attacks to happen in the lawless shores of the nation. Pirates on the other hand do not harm any of the captured crews or hostages as they were expecting to receive ransom in exchange for the pirated vessel’s release.