Sailors, including Pakistanis, held captive aboard the Somali oil tanker Honer 25 have run out of food supplies, medicines and drinking water, crew members told their families on Saturday.
The oil tanker, travelling from Oman to Somalia, was seized on April 21 by more than 50 sea pirates. There are a total of 17 crew members on board, 10 of whom are Pakistanis.
On Saturday, the pirates allowed the seventeen kidnapped sailors to contact their families. The Pakistani sailors were also each allowed a five-minute phone call to speak with their relatives.
According to the ship’s third officer, Kashif Umar, who is from Karachi, only rice remains on the vessel, which is boiled and eaten once a day.
He said that three crew members are ill, but all medicines on board have also run out. Kashif added that the biggest problem is drinking water.
“They are now forced to drink the dirty, muddy water used by the pirates because the pirates have exhausted the crew’s own water supply,” Umar said.
The Ansar Burney Trust also received a video message from the ship’s captain, who is from the Philippines. In the video, the captain shows documents detailing the ship’s owner.
He appealed to the government of Pakistan to urgently contact both the pirates and the ship’s owner to secure the release of the Pakistani citizens.
The head of the Ansar Burney Trust said that they were repeatedly being approached from the ship with pleas for help, but the government had remained completely silent on the matter.
He added that the trust could not do much for the release of the Pakistani sailors unless the government cooperated with them.
This is the second time in 22 that the pirates have allowed the hostages to contact their families and the trust.
Last week, Foreign Office spokesperson Tahir Andrabi said during a weekly briefing that Pakistan was in contact with the Somali government over the hostage situation involving Pakistani sailors aboard the hijacked oil tanker, adding that it believed the crew members were safe.
He said Pakistan’s embassy in Djibouti had approached Somali authorities, including the foreign ministry, and was informed that the vessel was anchored off the coast of Eyl in Puntland, a semi-autonomous region of Somalia.
“We have fair reason to believe that our crew members are safe and secure,” the FO spokesperson said, adding that the Somali Ministry of Foreign Affairs had been “very cooperative” and was closely monitoring the situation.