Hijacked MV Abdullah Made First Contact With Pirates

The pirates who hijacked MV Abdullah, a Bangladesh-flagged cargo ship, today contacted the owners of the vessel for the first time since seizing the ship with 23 crew members on board on March 12. Meanwhile The European Union and the Indian Navy have jointly increased pressure on the pirates to rescue the Bangladeshi ship MV Abdullah, which was hijacked from the Indian Ocean. Earlier a relative of one of the sailors aboard the Bangladesh-flagged vessel MV Abdullah, captured by pirates last week, has reported an escalation in their aggressiveness towards the crew. 

Mizanul Islam, media advisor of KSRM Group said, "The pirates contacted us through a third party this afternoon for the first time," a subsidiary of which owns the vessel.

"A contact has been established. We will discuss [with the pirates] further," he said replying to a query on whether the pirates demanded any ransom. "The owners have all sorts of preparation, we hope we shall able to solve the crisis through discussion," he told the media.

The pirates, believed to be Somalian, hijacked MV Abdullah with 23 crew members on March 12 around 500 nautical miles off the Somalian coast. The ship was sailing from Maputo in Mozambique to Al Hamriyah in the UAE with 58,000 tonnes of coal.

MV Abdullah is owned by SR Shipping Limited, a subsidiary of KSRM Group.