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| Ivory Coast: ITRI oil tanker 'seized off Abidjan' | Ivory Coast: ITRI oil tanker 'seized off Abidjan' |
| (about 1 hour later) | |
| Armed men have seized an oil tanker off Ivory Coast's main city, Abidjan, officials say. | Armed men have seized an oil tanker off Ivory Coast's main city, Abidjan, officials say. |
| The Panamanian-flagged vessel, ITRI, was attacked on Wednesday as it prepared to deposit 5,000 tons of oil, officials said, releasing the information for the first time. | |
| Pirate attacks have sharply increased in recent years off West Africa.News | |
| But most of these have taken place off the Nigerian coast, where oil is often stolen to be sold on the black market. | But most of these have taken place off the Nigerian coast, where oil is often stolen to be sold on the black market. |
| Ivorian-based shipping company Koda Maritime's deputy director Serge Constant told the BBC that 16 Nigerian crew were on board the ITRI boat, when it was seized by pirates. | |
| The attackers had fled with the vessel, which was now in Ghanaian waters, he said. | |
| "We are getting contradictory information about police operations so we don't know what's exactly going on", he said. "But it's now certain that the tanker has been taken into Ghanaian waters". | |
| The first recorded vessel hijacking off Ivory Coast was in October 2012 when 14 men armed with AK-47 rifles and knives boarded a tanker carrying 30,000 tons of gasoline. | |
| The crew was later released unharmed. |