PRETORIA, July 20. /TASS/. Seven Russian citizens are among the Curacao Trader tanker crewmembers kidnapped by pirates in the Gulf of Guinea, the Russian embassy in Nigeria said Monday.

"There are seven Russians among the 13 crewmembers kidnapped in a pirate attack on the Curacao Trader vessel on July 17 210 [nautical] miles away from Benin’s coast," reads the statement published via the embassy’s Twitter page.

On July 18, Alison Management Corp., the ship operator, revealed that pirates took 13 hostages in an attack on the tanker with 19 Russian and Ukrainian crewmembers in total. The company noted in a statement that its "vessel was attacked by pirates approx. 210 miles off the coast of Benin at 1100 hrs local time on 17th July."

On July 17, Dryad Global, a portal specializing in maritime security issues, reported the pirate assault on Curacao Trader. According to the portal, eight armed people climbed aboard. It is also noted that the Gulf of Guinea has never seen hostage situations so far from the coast. The portal suggests that a major vessel could have taken part in the criminal operation.

The Liberia-flagged chemical or oil tanker left Togo’s Lome before it was attacked 230 nautical miles from Nigeria’s Lagos. Curacao Trader Shipping owns the vessel.

Africa’s Gulf of Guinea stretching from Senegal in the north to Angola in the south has become the most dangerous region in the world in terms of pirate attacks. The first quarter of 2020 saw 45% of all global piracy assaults taking place there. Ships sailing through the gulf are endangered even more as pirates often kidnap crewmembers and take them as hostages for ransoms in the future. According to the International Maritime Bureau, more than 90% of sailor kidnappings in 2019 took place in the Gulf of Guinea.