Pirates firing machine guns and rocket-propelled grenades board tanker off Somalia

Pirates firing machine guns and rocket-propelled grenades have boarded a tanker off the coast of Somalia.

Greek shipping company Latsco Marine Management confirmed its vessel, Hellas Aphrodite, has been attacked, adding that all 24 of the crew were safe and accounted for. The United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations (UKMTO) agency issued an alert to warn ships in the area of the attack, which happened in the early hours of Thursday.

It located the vessel 560 nautical miles southeast of Eyl, Somalia, in the Indian Ocean. Eyl became famous in the mid-2000s as the centre of a wave of piracy.

"The Master of a vessel has reported being approached by one small craft on its stern. The small craft fired small arms and RPGs [rocket-propelled grenades] towards the vessel," UKMTO said in a statement.

The Malta-flagged tanker was en route from Sikka, India, to Durban, South Africa. "The pirates were reported to have approached on a skiff and opened fire on the tanker," private security firm Ambrey said in a statement, adding that Somali pirates were operating from an Iranian fishing boat they had seized.

Iran has not acknowledged the fishing boat's seizure, called the Issamohamadi. The European Union's Operation Atalanta, a counter-piracy mission around the Horn of Africa, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Read more from Sky News:The secrets behind the return of ISISSomalia is 'safer' than NuneatonISIS militants on death row in Somalia That EU force has responded to other recent pirate attacks in the area and had issued a recent alert to shippers that a pirate group was operating off Somalia and assaults were "almost certain" to happen. Thursday's attack comes after another vessel, the Cayman Islands-flagged Stolt Sagaland, found itself targeted in a suspected pirate attack that included both its armed security force and the attackers shooting at each other, the EU force said.

The vessel's operator Stolt-Nielsen confirmed there was an attempted attack, early on 3 November, which was unsuccessful. Hellas Aphrodite is described as an oil/chemical tanker, 183m long and 32m wide, which was built in 2016, according to vesselfinder.com..