Oil tanker hijacking raises fears of fresh Gulf region disruption

By Pranav Baskar and Matthew Mpoke BiggMonday May 4, 2026

A brazen seizure off Yemen has renewed fears that Somali pirates are regaining their footing — and raised fresh suspicions that they may be operating alongside Iran-backed Houthi rebels amid upheaval across the Middle East.

Maritime police forces from the Puntland State region of Somalia patrolling the Gulf of Aden last year.Credit…Feisal Omar/Reuters

Somali pirates hijacked an oil tanker off Yemen’s coast on Saturday and steered it into Somali waters, authorities in Somalia said on Sunday, marking the third such case in recent weeks.

The episode is an embarrassment for officials in Mogadishu and points to a possible revival of piracy at a moment when the Red Sea, which borders western Yemen, has become even more vital to global trade amid the effective closure of the Strait of Hormuz by the war in Iran.

Yemen’s Coast Guard said unidentified people boarded the Togo-flagged Eureka on Saturday and took it through Yemen’s section of the Gulf of Aden toward Somalia’s shoreline. It said efforts were under way to track the vessel and recover it.

The ship was being held for ransom off the Puntland State coast, according to Abshir Hashi Ali, director general of the ministry of ports in Galmudug State, part of Somalia’s federal system and a region that borders Puntland State.

The fact that the attack took place so close to Yemen has intensified concern in both countries that Somali pirates may be cooperating with the Houthis, the Yemeni rebel movement supported by Iran, said Mohammed Al-Basha, a regional analyst who was briefed on the seizure by Yemeni and Somali authorities.

An official in Puntland State, the semiautonomous region of Somalia, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss sensitive intelligence, said some Yemenis were also suspected in the operation and that investigators were examining whether they had links to armed groups, including the Houthis.

Over the years, the Houthis and Somali pirates have built ties, with the rebels occasionally supplying technology and military support. Analysts say the war may be giving them another incentive to work together, as high fuel prices create a chance to turn a profit.

Mr. Hashi, Puntland State’s director general of ports, said cooperation between the pirates and the Houthis was “a possibility.”

Somali piracy has long been a serious threat in the Red Sea region, peaking around 2010 when hundreds of ships were seized and shipping companies and insurers lost billions of dollars, much of it through ransom payments.

The threat later eased, helped by international naval coalitions led by NATO and the European Union, and by changes in shipping practices, including routes farther from Somalia’s coast and defenses such as water cannons to discourage attacks.

In recent years, however, Houthi missiles and drones fired at Red Sea shipping in support of Hamas’s war with Israel in Gaza have posed a greater danger to commercial vessels than piracy. The Houthis halted those attacks late last year after a cease-fire in Gaza.

Somali analysts say domestic conditions, more than international politics, offer the clearest explanation for why armed gangs from the country’s poor coastal areas are once again heading to sea in small boats.

Communities along the coast have long complained that the arrival of Chinese and Spanish trawlers has made fishing far less profitable. At the same time, gangs have seized on weaker policing of international waters near Somalia since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022, said Samira Gaid, a Somali security analyst.

“It’s a perfect opportunity for piracy to spike,” she said.

She added that because gangs can bring in tens of millions of dollars through ransom payments — money that then circulates through the coastal economy — piracy retains considerable local political backing despite being illegal.

For President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud of Somalia, the armed gangs undermine his argument that his government is reasserting sovereignty. Somalia has received naval assistance from Turkey, one of its most important allies, but it still cannot effectively police its waters.

The government is also fighting an insurgency by the terrorist group Al Shabaab, though the group is not believed to be involved in the recent ship hijackings, analysts and three Somali government security officials said on Sunday.

Since April, Somali pirates have seized at least three vessels off the country’s coast. The United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations center, run by the British Navy, has recently raised the threat level in the area and urged ships to take extra care.

Data from VesselFinder, a maritime tracking database, shows that the Eureka last docked in the United Arab Emirates. After moving close to Yemen’s shoreline, the vessel sharply turned toward Somalia and was last tracked about halfway between the two countries.

The ship’s current location and the crew’s condition were not clear. Royal Shipping Lines Incorporated, which public shipping data identifies as the tanker’s owner, did not respond to a request for comment.

Hussein Mohamed contributed reporting from Mogadishu

Pranav Baskar is an international reporter and a member of the 2025-26 Times Fellowship class, a program for journalists early in their careers.

Matthew Mpoke Bigg is the East Africa bureau chief for The New York Times, based in Nairobi, Kenya.