Sailors, oil tanker seized off Nigeria released

LAGOS, Nigeria— A piracy watchdog said sailors and an oil tanker seized by pirates off Nigeria’s oil-rich southern delta have been released.

The International Maritime Bureau says the MT Halifax was released Saturday morning. The ship, flagged out of Malta, had a foreign crew of Filipinos and Indians, with an Italian ship master.

The oil tanker’s seizure by pirates is just the latest attack by pirates in West Africa’s Gulf of Guinea, which follows the continent’s southward curve from Liberia to Gabon. Over the last eight months, piracy there has escalated from low-level armed robberies to hijackings and cargo thefts.