Somali pirates abandon hijacked UAE dhow used as mothership

Thursday May 7, 2026

Somali pirates have left a hijacked Emirati dhow loaded with lemons adrift after failing in an effort to use it as a floating launch pad for attacks on other ships, security sources in Somalia’s Puntland State state told AFP.

The fate of the crew of Fahad-4 remains unclear. No information was immediately available on what happened to the vessel’s sailors after the ship was seized in late April by an 11-man pirate gang as it left Mogadishu with its citrus cargo.

Amid a recent surge in similar seizures, the Joint Maritime Information Center (JMIC) lifted its pirate threat assessment in early May to “severe,” its second-highest warning level.

The JMIC, a 47-nation coalition operating in the northern Indian Ocean against the Horn of Africa’s long-running piracy threat, said the dhow was attacked roughly 10 nautical miles (19 kilometers) off Dhinowda, a coastal town in northeastern Somalia.

Puntland State security officials told AFP the pirate group had departed from an area near Garacad port, about 600 kilometers north of Mogadishu.

Once aboard, the pirates “sailed Somali waters using the hijacked ship as a mothership to attempt to attack other ships,” one source said.

But on May 4, they were forced to abandon the vessel when “their supplies were running short and they weren’t able to attack other ships because of a heightened alert by ships sailing through Somali waters in recent weeks,” a second official said.

Several other vessels taken in recent weeks are still in pirate hands.

Maritime monitors say pirates seized the Bajan-flagged Honour 25 tanker on April 21 off Puntland State.

Then, on April 26, the Syrian-pennant-waving M/V Sward was captured farther out along the Somali coast.

Meanwhile, in the Gulf of Aden, pirates took over the Togo-flagged Eureka petrol tanker off Yemen before steering it toward Somali waters.

In a recent bulletin, the Maritime Security Center Indian Ocean, which is linked to the European naval force deployed in the Horn of Africa, said it was “almost certain” the Fahad-4 was tied to an aborted April 28 attack on the Maltese M/V Minerva Pisces tanker.

During that incident, a dhow moved toward the tanker, but the would-be boarding party turned away after an armed security team appeared.

Somali authorities had not responded to a request for comment on the Fahad-4.