{"id":5771,"date":"2020-03-06T10:43:30","date_gmt":"2020-03-06T07:43:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.al-sindbad.net\/chemical-tanker-minerva-virgo-attacked-off-benin\/5771\/"},"modified":"2020-03-06T10:43:30","modified_gmt":"2020-03-06T07:43:30","slug":"chemical-tanker-minerva-virgo-attacked-off-benin","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.al-sindbad.net\/chemical-tanker-minerva-virgo-attacked-off-benin\/5771\/","title":{"rendered":"Chemical Tanker Minerva Virgo Attacked off Benin"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>Chemical tanker MT Minerva Virgo was boarded on Thursday, March 5, by a group of pirates while underway some 45 nautical miles of South Cotonou. <\/strong><\/p>\n<p><em>\u201cReporting indicates that the vessel has been boarded by 5-6 individuals. Unconfirmed reporting indicates that the majority of crew have reached the citadel with one person still unaccounted for,\u201d<\/em> Dryad Global said.<\/p>\n<p><\/p>\n<p>It is yet to be confirmed whether the unaccounted sailor was captured by pirates.<\/p>\n<p><\/p>\n<p>The ship was reportedly heading from The Netherlands to Lagos, Nigeria with 22 crew members on board when the boarding occurred.<\/p>\n<p><\/p>\n<p>According to a spokeswoman for the ship management company Minerva Marine, quoted by the Associated Press, the company was in contact with officials on shore seeking a vessel to approach the Minerva Virgo and pursue the pirates.<\/p>\n<p><\/p>\n<p>This is the third boarding incident reported in the waters off Benin in 2020 and the second incident to be reported within 24hrs in close proximity, Dryad said.<\/p>\n<p><\/p>\n<p><em>\u201cThis latest incident is 31nm NE of a previous kidnapping incident from the <a href=\"https:\/\/worldmaritimenews.com\/archives\/291343\/ten-seafarers-kidnapped-from-tanker-off-cotonou\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Alpine Penelope on February 20<\/a>. It is assessed as highly likely that the perpetrators of both incidents are the same grouping and are highly likely to have originated from within Nigerian waters,\u201d<\/em> the maritime security firm believes.<\/p>\n<p>world maritime news<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Chemical tanker MT Minerva Virgo was boarded on Thursday, March 5, by a group of pirates while underway some 45 nautical miles of South Cotonou. \u201cReporting indicates that the vessel has been boarded by 5-6 individuals. Unconfirmed reporting indicates that the majority of crew have reached the citadel with one person still unaccounted for,\u201d Dryad &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5772,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[64],"tags":[2816,2817,799,2814,897,2815],"class_list":["post-5771","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-maritime-news","tag-attacked","tag-benin","tag-chemical","tag-minerva","tag-tanker","tag-virgo"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.al-sindbad.net\/rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5771","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.al-sindbad.net\/rest\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.al-sindbad.net\/rest\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.al-sindbad.net\/rest\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.al-sindbad.net\/rest\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5771"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.al-sindbad.net\/rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5771\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.al-sindbad.net\/rest\/wp\/v2\/media\/5772"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.al-sindbad.net\/rest\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5771"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.al-sindbad.net\/rest\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5771"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.al-sindbad.net\/rest\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5771"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}