A ship with 22 crew members making its way from the Suez canal to Mumbai was hijacked Tuesday off the coast of Yemen and is being taken to Somalia, the Indian Coast Guard said.
The Hong Kong registered merchant vessel, MT Stolt Valor, was taken over by pirates 38 miles (60 kilometres) off the coast of Yemen, the Coast Guard said Wednesday in a statement.
The crew includes 18 Indians, two Filipinos, a Bangladeshi and a Russian.
Indian authorities were alerted by Singapore's Information Sharing Centre, which received a call from an Indian cadet saying 15 pirates had boarded the vessel and were taking it to the Somali coast.
Fredi Stolzenberg, of the tanker operator Stolt Shipping, said the pirates had not demanded a ransom, the Press Trust of India reported.
"We have not spoken to the hijackers today (but) they have let some of the crew call the company and they said all the crew are safe on board," he said.
"We had some communication yesterday. We cannot call them, they can only call us."
Somali waters are the most dangerous in the world for pirate attacks. The International Maritime Bureau reported more than 24 known attacks in the area between April and June, and more have been committed in recent months.
Maritime experts say many attacks go unreported along Somalia's 3,700 kilometres (2,300 miles) of coast, which is infested by pirates who operate high-powered speedboats and carry heavy machine guns and rocket launchers.
Topic: Stolt Valor hijacked off the coast of Yemen (Read 1166 times)