One injured in heavy cargo carrier robbery off Batam

Indonesia’s maritime security agency Baklama has reported another daring theft at sea off the Riau Islands, adding to a string of crimes targeting merchant ships’ engine room spare parts.

In the early hours of June 25, the Korean aircraft carrier Giant Dongbang No.6 On 26 July 2011, the vessel made a distress call at an anchorage off Kabil district in Batam, south of the Singapore Strait. At 03:30 local time, the crew reported that two unidentified vessels had approached the vessel and that two or three suspected robbers had climbed onto the vessel. Giants low freeboard hull aft. They entered the engine room and stole 44 spare parts, injuring one crew member in the process.

Batam VTS operator contacted KN patrol boat Tanjung Day, The police vessel arrived at 05:00, approximately 90 minutes after the distress call. However, the perpetrators had already fled. One crew member suffered a minor hand injury.

Image courtesy of Baklama

Giant Dongbang No.6 is a heavy-lift carrier with a deadweight capacity of 15,000 tonnes. It has delivered several large-scale cargoes, including modules for India’s first greenfield refinery project in two decades and monopiles for the Calvados wind farm, one of the first such installations in France.

AIS data provided by Pole Star shows the vessel has been moored off Batam at the same location since June 22. Over the past year, it has frequently returned to the same industrial terminal bordering Hang Nadim International Airport on the western side of the island.

According to the Regional Cooperation Agreement on Combating Piracy and Armed Robbery (ReCAAP), armed robbery on ships in Asia increased by 19% in 2023, particularly in the region around the Singapore Strait and the Strait of Malacca. A worrying trend was that there were more incidents in which the perpetrators were carrying knives and seven cases in which crew members were tied up. The volume of potential targets in busy straits and the availability of hiding places in the littorals create favourable conditions for robbers, and maritime crime has waxed and waned in the region over the decades.