The Italian navy has said it has boarded and taken control of a Sicilian fishing vessel which had been seized by armed men off the coast of Libya on Friday. This from AP:
The operation was conducted by military personnel operating in the area on migrant rescue duty. The statement did not say whether the Italian military encountered the armed men, but the Sicilian cooperative said the seven crew members were on their way back to port.
The navy said the fishing boat had been seized by armed men, apparently Libyan security forces, traveling on a tug boat around 90 kilometers (50 nautical miles) northwest of the Libyan port of Misrata.
BuzzFeed News' report on the seizure from earlier on Friday follows below.
A fishing cooperative on the Italian island of Sicily has said that a boat containing seven crew members has been taken by armed men, 40 miles (65 kilometers) off the Libyan coast, the Associated Press reported.
The cooperative said the ship — the crew of which consists of three Sicilians and four Tunisians — was being taken to the Libyan port of Misrata.
Francesco Mezzapelle, a spokesperson for the cooperative, said Italian port authorities had been alerted to the incident by another Italian fishing vessel in the area, and that the cooperative's president was liaising with both Libyan authorities and Italy's Foreign Ministry. There have been no reports of injuries.
Mezzapelle said he did not believe the armed men were from the Libyan military, AP said.
He added that there had been a dozen similar seizures since Libya asserted that its territorial waters extended beyond 70 miles offshore — well over international agreements — in 2005.