British special forces boarded an Italian cargo ship late Friday evening, after blind passengers had taken crew members hostage. This is reported by the police in Essex, according to Reuters news agency. No one was injured.
“The Sun” reports that the rescue operation was led by the British naval elite forces.
A total of four men threatened the crew on the ship, Grande Tema, who was at the entrance to the Thames. It tells a spokesman for Grimaldi Lines, who is the ship’s operator.
The men are believed to have boarded the ship in Nigeria on December 10th. Armed with iron pipes, they threatened the crew members to sail them to the British coast. That tells spokesman Paul Kyprianou:
– The ship sailed from Nigeria heading for Tilbury. Along the way, the crew discovers four blind passengers in a cabin. They managed to escape the cabin and threaten the crew and captain to sail closer to shore.
The police received a notification from the ship at nine o’clock in the morning. Here it was said that parts of the crew were hiding on the ship’s command bridge, the BBC writes.
14 hours later, British forces succeeded in overcoming the four men. Later, the ship was sailed safely in the port of Tilbury, which is nearly 50 kilometers from the capital, London.
The police are not investigating the case as terrorist, and the four arrested men are not charged with piracy.
/ Ritzau /
