The pirates holding the tanker MT Honour 25 killed five of its 17 crew before losing the ship to a rescue operation by security forces from Puntland, the autonomous region of northern Somalia. The regional government released the toll on Tuesday, 29 September.
They are the first deaths caused by Somali pirates in more than ten years, according to tallies cited by Al Jazeera and the South China Morning Post.
The hijacking
The Palau-flagged vessel was seized on 21 April 2026 off the Somali coast with 18,500 barrels of fuel on board. It spent just over five months in the hijackers' hands.
Those killed were three Pakistanis, one Myanmar national and one Indian. Four other crew members were wounded — three Pakistanis and one Indian.
"Before the operation began, the pirates on board the ship killed five of the crew," the Puntland Information Ministry said.
The operation
The Puntland Maritime Police Force and other regional security forces retook the vessel and arrested 16 suspects. The tanker was left, in the regional government's words, "under the government's control".
The operation was carried out by Somali regional forces rather than by one of the foreign navies patrolling the area — a detail that matters because the international response to piracy in the Indian Ocean was built, during the previous wave, around European and Asian flotillas.
A wave that came back
At least 15 attacks have been recorded off the Somali coast since April. The previous piracy wave in the region ran from 2008 to 2014 and paralysed entire routes before receding under international naval patrols.
Experts quoted by both outlets attribute part of the resurgence to the effects of the United States and Israel's war on Iran, which pushed up the price of oil and with it the value of a tanker's cargo — making that kind of vessel a more attractive target.
With information from Al Jazeera, the South China Morning Post and Reuters.
