Hamburg - A shipboard battle with pirates off the West African coast left a Ukrainian officer dead before the pirates fled with their booty, the vessel's German owners said Wednesday. The crew of the tanker Cancale Star managed to take one of the pirates prisoner during the Tuesday clash and delivered the man, apparently a Nigerian, to police in Cotonou in the nearby country of Benin.
The Cancale Star's first officer was killed and four crew injured in the incident, the Chemikalien Seetransport company in Hamburg said. The pirates helped themselves to the contents of the ship's safe before they got away.
Unconfirmed accounts in Benin said the vessel was attacked around 16 nautical miles off the Benin coast. Piracy is rife off West Africa though attacks are less frequent than off the East African nation of Somalia.
The tanker's crew of 24 hailed from Ukraine, Lithuania and the Philippines. The captain is Latvian. The Cancale Star had loaded oil in Rotterdam and its last port of call before the incident had been in Nigeria.
Chemikalien Seetransport GmbH says it has been an operator of specialized vessels for the past 35 years.
