In an eerily similar incident to those in the recently released blockbuster "Captain Phillips", pirates attacked an oil vessel off the coast of Nigeria and took the captain and chief engineers as hostages on Wednesday, according to Reuters.
The men abducted are U.S. citizens and were on the U.S. C-Retriever, a 222-foot vessel owned by the U.S. marine transport group Edison Chouest Offshore, Reuters reported. Anonymous officials said the two kidnapped men are believed to have been taken ashore to Nigeria.
According to Reuters, a U.S. defense official said the FBI and State Department are leading the American response to the incident, and that the U.S. Marine Corps has a small training unit in the area but was not clear if they would get involved.
A similar incident happened in April 2009, when Somali hijackers went aboard an American cargo ship and Capt. Richard Phillips offered himself to save his crew, as depicted in the new film starring Tom Hanks.
Phillips said in an interview with NBC's Today Show on Oct.11 that the waters off Nigeria were now worse than in Somalia.
After Navy secretary Ray Mabus visited the four countries surrounding the Nigerian gulf in August, he called the region a dangerous "hot spot," Reuters reported.
According to the International Maritime Bureau, since last year, the amount of pirate attacks on ships a major commodities routes passing through the West Africa Gulf Coast of Guinea has jumped by a third. Pirates attacks are driven by a want of cargo and crews for ransom.
U.S. Navy officials are working with local authorities to better share information and strengthen their ability to patrol the Gulf of Guinea, which has becom emore dangerous as piracy and robbery increases in the waters in that region, Reuters reported.
"The piracy threat is spreading even further through the waters of West Africa, and the attacks have been mounting, even as global rates of reported piracy are at their lowest since 2006," Michael Frodl of U.S.-based consultancy C-Level Maritime Risks told Reuters.
