Sri Lankan Navy News

Six crew members of a Sri Lankan fishing trawler hijacked by suspected Somali pirates have been rescued, Sri Lankan officials said on Monday.The hijacking on Sunday was the latest in a series of attacks that have fueled fears of a resurgence of Somali piracy in the Gulf of Aden and Red Sea waters after years without a successful raid.Pirates who caused chaos in the key waterways from 2008 to 2018 appear to be taking advantage of disorder caused by attacks on shipping by Yemen's Iran-aligned Houthi group.Authorities were informed of the incident by a second boat traveling with the trawler on Su

Mobile, Ala. shipbuilder Austal USA, part of Australia's Austal Group, hosted a christening ceremony for the future USS Santa Barbara (LCS 32) Independence-variant Littoral Combat Ship at the company’s Gulf Coast shipyard today. Ship sponsor Lolita Zinke performed the ceremonial bottle break over the bow of the Santa Barbara, the 16th LCS designed and constructed by Austal USA and the third U.S. Navy ship to be named after the California coast city.Zinke, wife of former U.S. Congressman and former U.S.

Sri Lanka on Thursday readied for the possibility of an oil spill after a cargo ship laden with chemicals sank off its western coast.The Singapore-registered MV X-Press Pearl, carrying 1,486 containers, including 25 tonnes of nitric acid along with other chemicals and cosmetics, was anchored off the port city of Negombo when a fire erupted onboard after an explosion on May 20.Flaming containers filled with chemicals tumbled into the sea from the ship's deck as emergency crews sought to contain the blaze over the ensuing two weeks.The craft began to sink early on Wednesday…

The owners the New Diamond supertanker which caught fire with a cargo of two million barrels of oil aboard has agreed to pay 340 million rupees ($1.84 million) to Sri Lanka for its help in extinguishing the blaze and averting disaster.The interim claim is for services provided by the Sri Lankan navy, air force, ports authority and Marine Environment Protection Authority (MEPA) after the fire on Sept. 3 until Sept 15, said Nishara Jayaratne, coordination officer of Sri Lanka's Attorney General.Insurers of the vessel West of England will settle the bill…

Sri Lanka is seeking at least 340 million rupees ($1.9 million) from the owner of the stricken oil supertanker New Diamond for assistance given to the vessel since it caught fire on Sept. 3, the coordinating officer to the country's attorney general said.Nishara Jayaratne said the cost was for services provided by various departments including the Sri Lankan navy, air force, ports authority and Marine Environment Protection Authority, among others, up until Sept. 15.The fully-loaded vessel is still in Sri Lankan waters…

Sri Lanka has initiated repair work on the ruptured fuel oil tank in the engine room of a stricken fully loaded oil supertanker after plugging the leak, the country's Navy said.The supertanker is currently 52 nautical miles (96 kms) from the Sri Lankan coast, Navy spokesman Indika de Silva said. "Salvors are on board, they plugged the leak and the repair is still going...They have vacated the ruptured tank and transferred the dirty water into the ballast section," de Silva told Reuters. A fire broke out in the engine room of the Greek-owned New Diamond tanker on Sept.

A salvage team is still trying to plug a fuel leak from the fire-stricken New Diamond oil supertanker, Sri Lankan Navy spokesman Indika de Silva said on Friday.The tanker, which is carrying the about 2 million barrels of oil, caught fire on Sept. 3 and is currently 45 nautical miles (83 km), off Sri Lanka's east coast.The fire has been extinguished but the New Diamond has left two long trails of fuel oil after the Navy towed it out to sea.Authorities want to avoid damage to the…

The Sri Lankan navy has towed a fire-stricken supertanker further out to sea to keep it off the coast of the Indian Ocean island after the wind picked up strength and changed direction, a spokesman said on Thursday.The tanker, loaded with 2 million barrels oil, was 50 nautical miles (95 km) from the east coast and moving in a northerly direction, the navy spokesman, Indika de Silva, said. Earlier, it had been headed southwest.The stricken vessel has raised fears of an environmental disaster…

The Sri Lankan navy said on Tuesday an oil slick had been spotted a kilometer from a loaded supertanker carrying roughly 2 million barrels of oil that has been engulfed in intermittent fires since an explosion on September 3.Oil from the engine room of the 20-year old New Diamond tanker “appears to have leaked out to the sea” following regular bouts of water-dousing by fire-fighting vessels, the navy spokesman said.The oil slick has raised concerns about the potential of further leakage from the cargo holds…

The Sri Lankan navy said on Wednesday it had extinguished another fire on a stricken supertanker loaded with 2 million barrels of oil and is towing it to deeper water.The navy's disaster management team put out the fire that reignited on Monday on the MT New Diamond, and there were currently no fires burning on the ship which is 41 nautical miles (76 km) off Sri Lanka's east coast.Officials were working to assess any damage to the environment from the incident, which began on Sept.

Sri Lanka's navy said on Tuesday that an oil slick had been spotted a kilometer from a loaded supertanker off the country's east coast, as efforts to extinguish a fire on board continued.Sri Lankan officials are working to assess any damage to the environment and marine life from the incident, which began on September 3, when a fire initially broke out in the engine room of the New Diamond supertanker.The first fire aboard the ship, which was chartered by Indian Oil Corp to import some 2 million barrels of oil from Kuwait, was put out, but a second one broke out on Monday."The ship has tilted

A fire on a supertanker abandoned off Sri Lanka's east coast has been extinguished, a Sri Lankan navy spokesman said on Sunday.“The fire on the oil tanker has been doused. However we are continuing to spray water in case it reignites,” Captain Indika De Silva told Reuters.The New Diamond is carrying about 2 million barrels of crude oil, although a senior Sri Lankan navy official said on Friday there was no real risk of a spill.The fire broke out in the engine room on Thursday morning and spread to the bridge of the ship.

There is no real risk of a spill from a fully loaded supertanker that caught fire off the east coast of Sri Lanka, a senior official in the Indian Ocean nation's navy said on Friday.The fire that broke out in the engine room of the New Diamond on Thursday morning had spread to the bridge of the ship, carrying about 2 million barrels of oil, though it has not reached the cargo area, the Sri Lankan navy said.Director-General of Operations Rear-Admiral Y N Jayarathna told reporters it was the navy’s view that there was no real danger of a spill…

A fully loaded oil tanker has caught fire off the east coast of Sri Lanka, which has dispatched an aircraft and two navy ships to help in the rescue, a Sri Lankan navy spokesman said on Thursday.The New Diamond, a very large crude carrier (VLCC) chartered by Indian Oil Corp (IOC), was heading to the port of Paradip in India, where the state-run firm operates a 300,000 barrel-per-day refinery.The ship had sailed from the port of Mina Al Ahmadi in Kuwait, carrying Kuwait Export Crude, Refinitiv Eikon ship tracking data showed.The Sri Lankan spokesman, Commander Ranjith Rajapaksa, said the VLCC was ablaze about 20 nautical miles off the east coast.

A joint effort between the Royal Australian Navy and the Sri Lankan Navy will set out to solve one of the remaining maritime mysteries of World War II, after new information has come to light regarding the whereabouts of a sunken warship.Australian destroyer HMAS Vampire sank on April 9, 1942 as the result of an intensive Japanese air attack off the Sri Lankan coast. The destroyer was broken in half by several bombs and went down in less than 10 minutes, killing nine sailors while hundreds more were rescued by the hospital ship Vita and local fishing vessels.

INS Darshak, a Hydrographic Survey ship of Eastern Naval Command (ENC), India departed on a two-month long deployment for undertaking two Joint Hydrographic surveys along  with the Sri Lankan Navy on 03 March 2017. The pioneer surveys will be conducted with Sri Lankan Naval personnel embarked on board INS Darshak. During the course of survey training of Sri Lankan personnel will also be undertaken on advanced hydrographic practices. The ship will visit Colombo and Galle harbours and undertake several joint exercises with Sri Lankan Navy. INS Darshak is a specialized survey ship of the Indian Navy, fitted with the latest state-of-the-art specialized survey equipment like multi beam system, side scan sonar and a fully automated digital surveying and processing system.

NYK LNG carrier 'Lusail' rescues fishermen from the sea off the coast of Sri Lanka. Lusail was sailing from Ras Laffan, Qatar, to Yungan, Taiwan, when a crewman on deck spotted two fishermen in in the sea. The captain immediately directed the crew to initiate a rescue and even though visibility was poor because of heavy rain, the first fisherman was pulled from the water 30 minutes later. Later a second fisherman was safety taken from the water by another vessel that had responded to Lusail’s call for assistance in the rescue.

Fort Lauderdale, FL – Resolve Marine Group Inc. and its  Resolve Salvage & Fire (Asia) Pte Ltd. subsidiary have announced that wreck removal operations at Kankesanthurai (KKS) Harbor in northern Sri Lanka have been completed. Retained by the Government of India/Shipping Corporation of India, and working on site in cooperation with the Government of Sri Lanka and Sri Lankan Navy since June, 2011, Resolve crews undertook the mapping, removal and disposition of ten vessels, which were sunk during the LTTE conflict between 1994 and 2000. The wrecks, lying outside and within the port, had obstructed safe navigation in the area and effectively prevented commercial shipping activity since that time.

Sri Lankan forces sank two suspected Tamil Tiger rebel boats off the northeast coast on Saturday, the navy said. A flotilla of rebel attack boats including a suicide craft was intercepted by the Sri Lankan navy while it was headed towards Chalai, a naval statement said. "During the confrontation one enemy log craft and one attack craft was destroyed," an official said. It said the rebels brought in more boats as reinforcements but these were successfully beaten back. There was no comment from the separatist Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) on the incident. A military official in the country's northeastern Trincomalee district said some fishing boats might also have been caught in the crossfire.

The Sri Lanka navy sank two Tamil rebel boats in a pre-dawn skirmish on Wednesday in waters off the country's northern Jaffna peninsula, military officials said. They said a navy patrol ran into a cargo convoy of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) near Jaffna's Point Pedro harbor. "Two of the boats blew up and sank when the navy opened fire, a clear indication that they were transporting explosives," a military spokesman. He said two other rebel craft were also badly damaged, but he could not confirm whether they had sunk. He did say however, that the navy patrol had returned to port without any casualties or damage. The LTTE…