23 crew members of hijacked ship may be rescued by this month: state minister
The 23 crew members of Bangladeshi vessel MV Abdullah, which was hijacked by Somali pirates on March 12, could be rescued by this month, Khalid Mahmud Chowdhury, the state minister for shipping, said today.
“Our main responsibility is to rescue them, and then hand them over to their families after bringing them back to the country. Work is going on in this regard. The whole situation is now under our control and we hope we will be able to bring back 23 hostages safely,” he said.
In reply to a question, the minister said, “The Department of Shipping is contacting them [the crew members of the ship] regularly and they all are safe and sound.”
“We had a goal to bring them back before the Eid-ul-Fitr but we couldn’t achieve it. We hope that they will be brought back shortly.”
Efforts are on to solve the problem through the foreign ministry but the department of shipping is also working, he added.
The pirates attacked MV Abdullah on March 12 around 1:30pm (Bangladesh time), when the vessel was around 600 nautical miles off the Somali coast, sailing from Maputo in Mozambique to Al Hamriyah in the UAE.
The ship is currently anchored near the Somali coast.
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