Private security on board luxury classic yacht opened fire on Yeman’s coast guard in the Gulf of Aden on Friday, sparking a brief exchange with the country’s military. The security team clearly mistook the Coast Guard for a pirate.
Don’t you hate it when unintentional international incidents interrupt your fun cruise through some of the most dangerous seas in the world?
In case you lost it:
Details are still unclear about the event. It was not immediately clear if anyone was injured or killed in the gunfight. Yemeni officials are keeping quiet about the event, according to the newspaper. Related pressbut there are some details that emerge:
Details of what happened to the Kalizma remained unclear hours after the incident, which the British military’s UK Maritime Commercial Operations Force initially reported as a gun attack. off the coast of Nishtun, in the far east of Yemen near the border with Oman.
But by Friday afternoon, the British military operation providing support to ships across the Middle East described the attack in the Gulf of Aden as “confirmed by the authorities as a government agency activity, ” without explaining in detail.
Ambrey, a maritime intelligence company, said in a summary that a Yemeni Coast Guard team approached a Cook Islands-flagged yacht that did not respond to radio calls.
According to the Coast Guard, “an armed security team … on board the yacht then opened fire on approaching Yemenis and attempted to escape the alleged pirates,” Ambrey said. . The Coast Guard “fired back and tracked the yacht for about an hour until contact was established with the yacht and the misunderstanding was resolved.”
This particular yacht, the Kalizma, also has an interesting place in history:
Originally built in 1906, Burton purchased the Kalizma for $220,000 in 1967. On board, he gifted actress and two-time wife Elizabeth Taylor a 69.42-carat pear-shaped diamond, now known as the Taylor-Burton Diamond.
The current owner is Indian investor Shirish Saraf who posted a very nice and in-depth video about Kalizma a few years ago.
Yes, I can see killing some Somali pirates or Houthi rebels (Yemen are in the middle of a civil war at the moment) to keep such a beautiful boat afloat and the goods can be incredibly rich its. Of course, being able to completely avoid such a body of water is a smart game.
We will update this post as more information becomes available.
