A Turkish cargo ship underwent a mutiny on the night of Sept. 4 while sailing off the shore of Odesa's Yuzhny Port, according to reports in the Ukrainian press.
The mutiny reportedly occurred aboard the Turkey-flagged Mehmet Unlu, a
108-meter long general cargo ship with a gross tonnage of 4,937 tons.
Ukraine’s Alfa special forces unit, as well as officials from the border
service, have boarded the ship, the reports indicate.
The story broke after Andrey Stavintser, the CEO of Yuzhny-based
stevedoring firm TIS, posted a report of the mutiny on his Facebook page.
“Part of the crew (mostly Turks) caused a blackout on the vessel and then
barricaded themselves in,” Stavintser wrote, adding that the ship’s captain had
been seriously injured in clashes on the vessel.
Calls to TIS and Yuzhniy went unanswered.
Ukraine’s State Security Service released a statement on Monday morning
detailing the operation to retake the ship, saying that it had sent an Alfa
unit to storm the vessel.
The SBU added that the decision to deploy the unit was made after it became
clear that part of the crew were being held hostage.
According to MarineTraffic, an online service that tracks the movements of
ships around the world, the Mehmet Unlu was en route from Mykolaiv to the
Jordanian port of Aqaba when the alleged mutiny took place. The website, which
relies on automatic electronic communications from the vessels, reported that
the ship had been anchored off Yuzhny since the night of
September 4.
According to ship-tracking website www.vesselfinder.com, the Mehmet Unlu is currently located about 5
kilometers off the Odesa Oblast coastal town of Chornomorske.
The Mehmet Unlu had previously docked at Tripoli, Libya and Yarimca,
Turkey, before going to Mykolaiv.
