The hijacked Bangladeshi-flagged cargo vessel MV Abdullah was located four nautical miles from the Godobjiraan shore in north-eastern Somalia on Sunday, with all 23 crew members reportedly safe five days after they were held hostage by pirates in the Indian Ocean.

‘Yesterday [Saturday] night around 8:30pm, one of our officials spoke with hostage crew members, and they were all safe,’ Mizanul Islam, spokesperson of the ship’s owning company, SR Shipping, told New Age.

The crew members were asking for their rescue while the official assured them of working on it, he added.

The authorities had no idea how many days the crew could manage with their reserve food because pirates were also depending on it, Mizan said.

He stated that they could neither get in touch with the pirates yet nor could they figure out how to get food and water to the crew via a third party.

On Tuesday, a gang of armed pirates took control of the MV Abdullah when it headed for Al Hamriyah Port in the United

Arab Emirates, carrying cargo loaded with coal from Mozambique’s Maputo port.

The vessel, belonging to the Bangladeshi organisation SR Shipping Lines, a sister concern of Chattogram-based Kabir Steel and Rerolling Mill Group, has 23 crew members on board.

The vessel was carrying around 58 thousand tonnes of coal.

Foreign minister Hasan Mahmud on Saturday called upon all concerned to behave responsibly from their respective positions to help overcome the rescue process of both crew members and the Bangladeshi ship safely.

Hasan said that the government was working on this, and in the past, it was possible to free hijacked ships and sailors of the same company after 100 days through joint efforts.

SR Shipping chief executive officer Meherul Karim said that in December 2010, Somali pirates hijacked the company’s vessel, MV Jahan Moni, in the Arabian Sea and took 25 sailors hostage, among others. They were freed from the pirates two and a half months later and brought back home.

The European Union Naval Force, in a recent statement, said that Operation ATALANTA continued monitoring the piracy event involving the Bangladesh-flagged bulk carrier.