Italian commandos storm Turkish ship to foil migrant hijackers

Italian special forces stormed a cargo ship after 15 “illegal migrants” armed with knives attempted to hijack a ship and take its crew hostage.

Pictures from the raid showed heavily armed commandos dropping onto the ship from helicopters before moving across the deck with their guns raised.

“The stowaways were using what seem to be weapons like daggers” to threaten the crew, said Guido Crosetto, Italy’s defence minister.

The armed gang was from mainly Syria, Afghanistan and Iraq, The Guardian reported. According to Mr Crosetto they were illegal migrants.

The 13 men and two women had snuck onto the Galatea Seaways ship in an attempt to reach Europe. The ship had left Sete in France on June 7, bound for Yalova in Turkey.

The ship’s crew spotted the gang in the late morning on Friday through security cameras, which showed them wandering around the boat.

The captain told Italian police he sounded the alarm after he saw two of them carrying knives.

The crew locked themselves in the engine room and alerted maritime authorities in Turkey, who in turn contacted Italy and France.

“Everything ended well,” Mr Crosetto wrote on Twitter.

“My congratulations to the guys of the San Marco battalion and the police, who completed a wonderful operation,” he wrote.

Ansa news agency reported that prosecutors have ordered police to make checks into what happened and that the migrants have been disembarked. The ship was due to continue on its journey from the southern city of Naples.

The incident follows growing discontent in Turkey over migration. The country turned into the home of one of the world’s largest migrant populations when it struck a deal with Brussels to help resolve Europe’s 2015-16 refugee crisis.

But economic instability exacerbated by the coronavirus pandemic has engendered public fear of migrants to levels rarely recorded before.

In recent years that fear has turned to hostility and led to growing support for their departure.

In Turkey’s most recent election, anti-migrant rhetoric became a feature of campaigning, with opposition candidate Kemal Kilicdaroglu accusing President Erdogan of being too soft on migrants.