Somali pirates have seized an oil tanker off the coast of Yemen, marking the second hijacking of its kind in just ten days and the fourth successful pirate attack in two weeks. The vessel, MT Eureka, flying the flag of the west African nation of Togo, was boarded by armed gunmen at around 5:00 AM local time near the port of Qana in the Gulf of Aden — the strategic waterway separating Yemen from the Horn of Africa. The Yemeni coastguard confirmed the hijacking and said the tanker was headed toward Somalia, where it is expected to anchor in Somali waters within hours.

Three separate security officials from Puntland, a semi-autonomous region in northeastern Somalia, told reporters that the pirates departed from a remote coastal area near the seaside town of Qandala. The hijacking follows the April 22 seizure of the Honor 25, another oil tanker carrying 18,500 barrels of crude bound for Mogadishu. In a separate incident on the same day as the Eureka hijacking, the United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations (UKMTO) reported that armed individuals aboard a skiff approached a bulk carrier near Al-Mukala, Yemen. Security officials said those gunmen originated from near Caluula, a fishing town some 209 kilometres from where the Eureka attackers launched. The two incidents suggest piracy is spreading across Somalia's vast coastline — the longest in mainland Africa at over 3,300 kilometres.

Somali piracy, which had declined sharply after a peak around 2011, began surging again in late 2023. The resurgence is widely linked to Houthi rebel attacks on commercial shipping in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden, which drew international naval forces away from counter-piracy operations to confront the Houthi threat — creating a security vacuum that armed groups along the Somali coast have exploited. The European Union's Operation Atalanta, established in 2008 to combat piracy around the Horn of Africa, continues to monitor the situation, though neither EU naval forces nor Somali authorities had publicly addressed the latest hijacking at the time of reporting. More than a dozen sailors, the majority Pakistani nationals, are reported to be held by Somali pirates across multiple incidents.

The scale of the problem may be greater than publicly acknowledged. "The ongoing crisis with the pirates is much worse than many realise. There are increasing movements of armed groups all over the coast," one Puntland security official warned. With piracy expanding geographically and incidents accelerating in frequency, pressure is growing on regional and international bodies to recalibrate their maritime security response.