Pirates take six from oil tanker as hostages

Six members of the 16-man crew on a Liberia-flagged tanker are being held hostage by pirates who boarded the ship in West Africa’s Gulf of Guinea last week, the Danish shipper that owns the vessel and the French Navy said Friday. Pirates boarded the Monjasa Reformer southwest of Port Pointe-Noire, Congo, on March 25 and five days later, the French Navy that was patrolling the area found the ship off the small island nation of Sao Tomé and Principe, north of where it had been attacked. In a statement, company spokesperson Thorstein Andreasen said that “the pirates had abandoned the vessel and brought a part of the crew members with them.”