About 40 gunmen from Basra launched a maritime raid off the coast of Somalia to rescue a hijacked vessel and its crew in the Gulf of Aden. The fighters, members of the Al-Shaghanba tribe, captured seven pirates during a 5 hour firefight after refusing to pay a ransom demanded by the hijackers from a fellow tribesman who owned the ship.

The recovered vessel is the Sibu 1, an oil tanker currently subject to US sanctions. The Al-Shaghanba members coordinated the operation with contacts outside Iraq to locate the ship and seize it by force rather than through financial negotiation.