The Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA) has announced that the 10 Filipino seafarers who were abducted last month by pirates operating in the Gulf of Guinea are set to return home on Monday, April 19, 2021.
In a statement, the DFA said the 10 Filipino crewmen, along with five other nationalities, were released by their captors on April 11, 2021, nearly a month after they were taken hostage while aboard chemical tanker MT David B off the coast of Benin.
The six other Filipino crew members of Davide B who were spared from the kidnapping arrived home on April 3, 2021 with the help of their Dutch employer and the local manning agency Elburg Shipmanagement Phil's, Inc. who secured their safe release, as well as their immediate repatriation.
De Poli Shipmanagement confirmed that its vessel, MT Davide B, was attacked about 210 nautical miles south of Cotonou, Benin on March 15, 2021.
The MT Davide B is a 2016 built chemical tanker that was on a commercial voyage from Riga, Latvia to Lagos, Nigeria at the time of the attack and was flying under the Maltese flag.