An oil tanker carrying 900,000 litres of diesel has been hijacked and taken into Indonesian waters, Malaysian maritime authorities said.
The Malaysian Maritime Enforcement Agency (MMEA) said in a statement that the ship, Vier Harmoni, has been located in the waters off Batam, Indonesia.
The MMEA said they have yet to confirm the identity of the hijackers. The ship, which sailed from the Tanjung Pelepas port in Malaysia on Monday, was carrying diesel with an estimated value of 1.57 million ringgit ($392,795).
However, a fuel tanker that disappeared from a Malaysian port was likely taken by its own crew in a dispute with their employer, Indonesian authorities have said.
Malaysian and Indonesian maritime authorities are still searching for the vessel but ruled out a hijacking, which was earlier reported by several news agencies.
The captain of the vessel twice informed his employer that he was taking the ship back to the Indonesian island of Batam because of an “internal management problem”, the AFP news agency reported later on Wednesday.
Al Jazeera’s Step Vaessen, reporting from the Indonesian capital Jakarta, said the tanker was near Batam and the crew were believed to have “no intention of selling the oil”.
“Malaysian and Indonesian authorities are not calling this a hijacking, or an act of piracy; they’re calling this an internal dispute,” she said.
