Picture shared by Ansar Burney Trust on September 25, 2026, showing Pakistani sailors kidnapped by Somali pirates. (Ansar Burney Trust/File)
KARACHI: After more than five months in captivity, the last three Pakistani crew members from an oil tanker seized by Somali pirates are due to return home on Wednesday, their relatives and officials said. The ordeal ended with five sailors dead and highlighted the renewed piracy threat off Somalia.
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Somali pirates seized the Palau-flagged MT Honour 25 on April 21 off Puntland State, in northeastern Somalia. The tanker was carrying 17 crew members, 10 of them Pakistani. Puntland State forces recaptured the vessel last week and arrested 16 suspected pirates, regional authorities said.
Five crew members, three Pakistanis, an Indian and a Myanmar national, were killed and four Pakistanis wounded during the operation to recover the vessel, according to Puntland State authorities and Pakistan’s Foreign Office.
Four wounded Pakistani sailors and the remains of three Pakistani crew members arrived in Karachi on Sunday. The other three survivors — Syed Hussain Yousuf, Imran Ali and Muhammad Yasin — were in Addis Ababa awaiting a flight home.
“We are in constant contact with them,” Syed Talib, the nephew of Yousuf, who served as the vessel’s second engineer, told Arab News on Tuesday. “They are not injured. They are otherwise fine.”
Talib said the men had traveled via Garowe, Puntland State’s capital, before continuing to Ethiopia. Yousuf and Ali are from Karachi, while Yasin comes from Swat in northwestern Pakistan.
Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Ishaq Dar said Monday that the sailors had been flown to Addis Ababa with an escort from Pakistan’s embassy in Djibouti. They were expected to leave for Karachi on the first available Ethiopian Airlines flight on Wednesday.
The seizure came as piracy and armed robbery again threaten shipping lanes around Somalia, the Gulf of Aden and the Red Sea. The International Maritime Organization said in July that 24 attempted or confirmed incidents had been recorded in the region during the previous three months. At the time, 44 seafarers were being held aboard three vessels, including the Honour 25.
“These incidents are a stark reminder that the threat posed by piracy and armed robbery to seafarers has not receded and continues to warrant vigilance and support for coordinated action,” IMO Secretary-General Arsenio Dominguez said at the time.
Puntland State authorities said the Honour 25 was transporting about 18,500 barrels of oil when pirates took control of it.
Qurat Ul Ain, a legal adviser at the Ansar Burney Trust, the Pakistani human rights organization that worked on the case, said the group’s efforts to secure the crew’s release and return were now complete.
“Our work is done after all the legal requirements,” she told Arab News. “Three bodies have been buried, four injured crew members are already home and the remaining three will come tomorrow.”
She added that neither the sailors nor their families had so far contacted the organization regarding potential compensation or insurance claims.
