Tanker off Yemen boarded by armed people, diverted towards Somalia, UKMTO says (Aug 20, 2026, Jana Choukeir)

A tanker was boarded by six armed people who took control of the vessel and diverted it towards Somalia, according to the United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations centre. The incident took place roughly 136 nautical miles east of Yemen's Mukalla, where the tanker, travelling west in the Gulf of Aden, reported being approached by an unauthorised vessel. UKMTO provided no further details and did not say whether the tanker or its crew were safe. [NOTE: the wire copy contains zero-width rendering characters from the CMS; the desk quotes short spans and cleans invisible characters when quoting. The piece carries NO vessel name, NO sanctions or shadow-fleet mention anywhere in the body — the ship is 'a tanker' throughout.]