Yahoo Autos Yacht's Private Security Sparks Firefight After Mistaking Yemen's Coast Guard for Pirates
Private security aboard a luxury vintage yacht opened fire on Yeman’s coast guard in the Gulf of Aden Friday, causing a brief exchange with the country’s military. The security team apparently mistook the Coast Guard for pirates.
Don’t you hate it when unintentional international incidents interrupt your pleasure cruise through some of the most dangerous waters in the world?
Read more
In case you missed it:
A Sam’s Club Had Diesel in the Gas Holding Tanks and it Went as Badly as You’d Expect
Man Finds Out the Hard Way That There Are Limits to Southwest’s ‘Sit Wherever You Want’ Policy
Details are still unclear regarding the event. It’s not currently known if anyone was injured or killed in the resulting exchange of gunfire. Yeman officials are keeping mum about the event, according to the Associated Press, but there are some details emerging:
Details of what happened to the Kalizma remained unclear hours after the incident, which the British military’s United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations initially reported as an attack with gunfire off Nishtun, in Yemen’s far east near the border with Oman.
But by Friday afternoon, the British military operation providing support to ships across the Mideast described the attack in the Gulf of Aden as being “confirmed by authorities as government agency activity,” without elaborating.
Ambrey, a maritime intelligence company, said in a brief that a Yemeni Coast Guard contingent had approached a Cook Islands-flagged yacht which hadn’t responded to radio calls.
According to the Coast Guard, “an armed security team ... onboard the yacht then opened fire on the approaching Yemenis and attempted to escape perceived pirates,” Ambrey said. The Coast Guard “returned fire and followed the yacht for approximately an hour until communications with the yacht could be established and the misunderstanding between the parties resolved.”
This particular yacht, the Kalizma, has an interesting place in history as well:
