Ghana-flagged tanker ablaze on Cameroon coast

YAOUNDE — A Ghanaian-flagged oil tanker was still ablaze on Friday on the coast of Cameroon, where it ran aground two nights ago near the town of Limbe, local gendarmerie chief Elie Mbape said.

"The firemen worked throughout the night, but they haven't been able to put out the blaze," said chief adjutant Mbape, who added that the whole crew seemed to have abandoned ship.

A Red Cross official told AFP that the organisation had sent a team of 18 rescue staff to the site of the mystery vessel, which ran aground on Wednesday at Debunscha, about 30 kilometres (20 miles) from Limbe in southwest Cameroon. Mbape said that the ship may have caught fire at sea and stressed that no possibility could be ruled out, "including a pirate attack." Rebel groups are active off Cameroon's Bakassi peninsula, on the border with Nigeria.

According to the ship's log kept by its Ghanaian captain, the ship "took on 141,000 litres of fuel in Nigeria on October 1" and the vessel had been headed westwards from Calabar in Nigeria.

Nobody from the ship has been found and there are no bodies, so Cameroon rescue forces were unsure what to seek, including possibly a life raft, since it was unclear at what stage the crew left the boat.

Bakassi rebels sometimes take hostages for ransom.

According to the Cameroonian gendarmerie and the private daily Le Jour, one person was killed and two others wounded on Wednesday in an attack on a Cameroonian fishing boat.

"It's difficult to make any connection" between the two events, Mbape said.