The Pirates where seized the Bangladesh-flagged cargo ship MV Abdullah contacted the ship-owning company for the first timeannounced today representative of the KSRM group. The communication came eight days after gunmen stormed the ship, which was sailing about 550 nautical miles off the coast of Somalia.

The MV Abdullah had departed with a crew of 23 from Maputo, Mozambique carrying 55,000 tonnes of coal to the United Arab Emirates. It is owned by SR Shipping Limited, a subsidiary of the KSRM group. “The pirates communicated through a third party today, for the first time,” Mizanul Islam, a spokesman for the KSRM group, told reporters. However, he emphasized that they did not make a demand for a ransom payment, suggesting that such a thing would follow in a future communication.

Since December, there have been strong fears of a resurgence of pirate raids off Somalia, as there was concern that they would try to capitalize on the disruption Yemen’s Houthis have caused with attacks on merchant ships in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden.