Terrified crew members phoned their families with warnings as pirates boarded their bulker in the Indian Ocean on Tuesday.
All 23 Bangladeshi seafarers are being held hostage on the 58,000-dwt Abdullah (built 2015) after the attack.
The ship, controlled by Bangladesh’s KSRM Group, was heading towards the Somali coast.
Footage posted to Facebook by one crew member shows a small boat travelling alongside the starboard bow while the vessel was underway.
The hijacking took place 1,111 km northeast of Mogadishu.
The crew members are safe and uninjured, KSRM’s SR Shipping unit told Bloomberg.
The Prothom Alo website reported that chief officer Atiq Ullah Khan sent an audio message to his wife on Tuesday.
He said: “Share this message with everyone. (They are) taking mobile phones from us.”
“The final thing is, if they are not paid, they are ordered to kill us one by one. They said that the sooner they get payment, the sooner they will release us,” he added.
The bulker was heading to Dubai from Mozambique with coal.
The officer also told his family that about 50 pirates had boarded the vessel.
The crew was told it would take about two-and-a-half days to reach Somalia.
Second KSRM vessel hijacking
This is not the first time steel producer KSRM has suffered a hijacking.
In 2010, the 44,400-dwt bulker Jahan Moni (built 1996) was seized off India’s southwest coast.
There were 25 crew members and one family member on board the handymax, which was en route to Greece.
The ship was released in March 2011 after a ransom was paid.
