ACCRA: Three Chinese nationals are missing after their vessel came under a “suspected pirate attack” off the coast of Ghana, authorities said over the weekend.
The apparent kidnapping is the latest in the Gulf of Guinea, an area off the Atlantic coast of Africa whose waters — rich in hydrocarbons and fisheries — stretch across several jurisdictions, including those of countries with limited naval and coast guard capacities.
Just before 6 p.m. on Thursday, seven armed people boarded the Mengxin I vessel in Ghanaian waters and fired warning shots, the Ghanaian military said in a statement.

The assailants rounded up members of the crew and sent others into hiding.
By the time the attackers departed three hours later, the captain, chief mate, and chief engineer — all Chinese nationals — were missing, according to the statement, dated Saturday.
They are “suspected of being kidnapped by the attackers,” it said.
Ghanaian authorities are sharing information with other members of the West African regional bloc ECOWAS, it added.
In 2022, a UN Security Council resolution co-sponsored by Ghana and Norway was issued to condemn the spike in piracy in the Gulf of Guinea.
A study published in 2021 by the Stable Seas research institute found that pirate groups, mostly in the Niger Delta, can earn around $5 million per year through theft and hostage-taking.
That same year, a Danish naval patrol killed four pirates in an exchange of fire off the coast of Nigeria.

NIAMEY: Niger has withdrawn from the military coalition fighting terrorist groups in the Lake Chad region of west-central Africa, saying it will focus instead on protecting its oil operations from attacks.
The announcement comes amid rising tensions between the four countries bordering Lake Chad since a 2023 coup by Niger’s military.
In a bulletin read on state TV, the army said the operation under the Multinational Joint Task Force, active since 2015, would now be called “Nalewa Dole” following Niger’s withdrawal.
The move “reflects a stated intent to reinforce security for oil sites,” the bulletin stated, without further elaboration.
The four countries that surround Lake Chad — Cameroon, Chad, Niger and Nigeria — have been battling insurgencies since 2009, after a spate of violent campaigns by the Boko Haram group in Nigeria’s northeast spilled into its neighbous.
The ensuing conflict, which has drawn in other extremist groups, has killed over 40,000 people and displaced around two million, causing one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises.
But since the July 2023 coup, Niger’s military junta has accused Nigeria of supporting foreign forces in a bid to destabilize it, which Abuja denies.
Oil infrastructure in southeast Niger meanwhile, in particular a pipeline leading from the landlocked country to Benin, regularly face attacks by armed groups.
The governor of Niger’s Diffa region, General Ibrahim Bagadoma, said at a regional summit in February that “The problem is that some are making efforts, while others are undermining them. We must present a united front and end foreign regional interferences.”
Late last year, Chad had threatened to withdraw from the Joint Task Force after an attack killed around 40 of its soldiers, citing an “absence of mutualized efforts.”