A Thai oil tanker is believed to have been hijacked on its way to Indonesia, the International Maritime Bureau (IMB) said on May 31.

News reports here cited the bureau’s Kuala Lumpur-based Piracy Reporting Centre as saying that the ship lost contact after leaving Singapore on May 27 on its way to Pontianak port in the Indonesian city of Kalimantan.

The IMB has urged other vessels to keep a lookout for the missing tanker, which has 14 sailors aboard.

From January-March, as many as 23 actual and attempted pirate attacks were recorded, mainly off the coast of Indonesia.

Last April, a group of heavily-armed pirates attacked a Thai oil tanker off the eastern coast of Malaysia, injuring its captain and stealing diesel fuel from its cargo.-VNA