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Armed men seized an Italian fishing boat with seven crew members 40 miles (65 kilometers) off the Libyan coast early on Friday, and were bringing the boat and crew to the Libyan port of Misrata, a Sicilian fishing cooperative said.
Port authorities in Mazara del Vallo were alerted to the seizure by other fishing boats in the area, said Francesco Mezzapelle, spokesman for the COSVAP Sicilian fishermen’s consortium. The consortium’s president has contacted both Libya’s agriculture and fishing ministry as well as the Italian foreign ministry in efforts to resolve the incident.
Mezzapelle called it “an act of piracy,” and said the gunmen did not appear to be from the Libyan military, but their loyalties were not clear. Libya is split between east and west, with rival parliaments backed by warring militias.
“We need to evaluate if they are terrorists,” Mezzapelle said.
The crew, three Sicilians and four Tunisian residents of Italy, were fishing for shrimp. It was not clear if shots were fired, and there were no reports of injuries, Mezzapelle said.
The consortium said there have been a dozen such seizures of Italian fishing vessels since 2005 when Libya asserted that its territorial waters extended more than 70 miles off shore well beyond international agreements. One Italian boat seized in 2012 remains held in the Libyan city of Benghazi, although the crew members were released after a month, Mezzapelle said.
The deteriorating security situation in Libya has heightened concern for the fishermen’s safety, he said.
“We are very worried, and so are their families,” Mezzapelle said.