Essex police called after four stowaways appear armed with metal bars inboard ship which sailed from Lagos

BRITISH police are looking to arrest four stowaways who boarded a Grimaldi Lines ship that sailed into the Thames Estuary from Nigeria and have since threatened the crew with iron bars raising the spectre of a commando raid to arrest them.

Paul Kyprianou, a spokesman for Grimaldi Lines, say that the stowaways had been found on board the vessel and they have since begun threatening the crew. Essex Police have been called amid fears about the safety of the crew although so far, there are  no indications that anyone on board had been harmed.

For now, the incident is  not being treated as a hostage situation or a piracy or terror related event. Apparently, the crew of the 71,000-tonne  ship found four stowaways on board this week and locked them in a cabin but they broke out yesterday  morning armed with iron bars and brandished them at the crew who had fed and looked after them.

As a result, the crew quickly locked themselves on the ship’s bridge and sent out an alert to the coastguard. British police were deployed out to sea in the hope of taking back control of the ship which left Lagos on December 10 after receiving the signal.