Somali pirates killed the crew of an oil tanker before a rescue operation could reach the vessel, a Somali official told the BBC. Piracy off Somalia's coast has been rising again in recent years, after dropping sharply when international naval patrols began in 2011. Somali pirates killed the crew of an oil tanker before a rescue operation could reach the vessel, a Somali official told the BBC. The official did not disclose the exact location of the attack, the tanker's flag, or the number of crew members who died, citing the sensitivity of the case.

The killings come amid a documented resurgence of piracy along Somalia's coast. Hijackings and ransom seizures were once rampant off the Horn of Africa, peaking in the years before 2011, when international naval coalitions began patrolling the Gulf of Aden and the wider western Indian Ocean, a deployment credited with sharply curbing attacks on merchant shipping for roughly a decade. In recent years, however, incidents have crept back up, according to maritime security trackers, reviving concern among shipowners, insurers and crew unions about the safety of vessels transiting one of the world's busiest routes for oil and container traffic between Asia, the Gulf and Europe.

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