Somali pirates seize 2 ships in 4 days as hijackings hit decade high

Somali pirates seized an oil tanker off the coast of Yemen on Thursday, the second vessel hijacked in four days, in what experts describe as the most serious resurgence of piracy in the region in over a decade.

Two Ships Taken in Rapid Succession

The tanker SIBU 1, registered under the Eritrean flag but believed to be part of Iran's shadow fleet, was boarded by six armed individuals 136 nautical miles east of Yemen's Al Mukalla, according to the United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations centre. UKMTO confirmed the armed group took control of the vessel and redirected it toward Somalia.aljazeera

The hijacking followed the seizure on Monday of the M/V LUTUF, a Cameroon-flagged cargo ship carrying Turkish weapons, which was taken approximately 3.5 nautical miles off Puntland's Eyl district, according to a Somali official who spoke to the Associated Press. The ship, owned by Polar Movement Shipping, was bound for a Turkish military training facility in Mogadishu and carried communications and satellite equipment along with the weapons. Its 10-member crew included six Indians, one Turkish national, one Georgian, and two Serbian security guards.abcnews

Turkish helicopters and drones monitored the area after the LUTUF was taken, and an airstrike followed a delivery of khat to the vessel on Tuesday, killing four men and wounding two others, though the circumstances could not be independently verified.abcnews

A Decade-High Threat

Somali pirates are now holding six ships and more than 100 crew members captive, according to a local ports authority official cited by The New York Times. The ICC International Maritime Bureau recorded 13 piracy incidents off Somalia in just the first seven months of 2026, compared to five in all of 2025, according to an analysis by Danish Shipping.nytimes+1

Between 2005 and 2012, Somali pirates carried out more than 1,000 attacks before an international naval crackdown largely ended hijackings by 2013. The EU naval mission Operation Atalanta assesses that several pirate groups are now active and demonstrating the ability to carry out coordinated operations with increasing range.maritime-executive+1

War With Iran Blamed for Security Vacuum

Analysts point to the U.S.-Iran conflict as the primary driver of the resurgence. Naval forces that once patrolled Somali waters have been redeployed to the Middle East, while Houthi attacks in the Red Sea have pushed commercial shipping closer to pirate hotspots along the Somali coastline.cnbc+1

"This is obviously a very, very lucrative business for them, and right now they have a far lower risk of American reaction to it because so many resources are tied up in the Middle East in general," Brett Erickson, managing principal of Obsidian Risk Advisors, told Politico.politico

A White House official pushed back on the characterization, calling it "false" to "blame localized piracy attacks on recent regional conflicts with Iran" and asserting the U.S. maintains "robust, highly capable maritime security forces" in the region. But maritime intelligence firm Windward concluded the pirates are "back as an active operational threat to commercial shipping in the Western Indian Ocean and southern Gulf of Aden."politico

Regional states under the Djibouti Code of Conduct have agreed to launch a Combined Task Force modeled on a similar effort in the Gulf of Guinea, with a planning workshop set for September 7-9 in Kenya.maritime-executive