Liner's escape 'fortunate'

2008-12-02 16:07

Elizabeth Kennedy

Nairobi - Pirates near Somalia chased and shot at a US cruise liner with more than 1 000 people on board but failed to hijack the vessel, a maritime official said on Tuesday.

The liner, carrying 656 international passengers and 399 crew members, was sailing in the Gulf of Aden on Sunday when it encountered six pirates in two speedboats, said Noel Choong who heads the International Maritime Bureau's piracy reporting centre in Malaysia.

The pirates fired at the passenger liner but the larger boat was faster than the pirates' vessels, Choong said.

"It is very fortunate that the liner managed to escape," he said, urging all ships to remain vigilant in the area.

The ship's owner, Oceania Cruises Inc, identified the vessel as the M/S Nautica.

In a statement on its website, the company said pirates fired eight rifle shots at the liner as it sailed along a maritime corridor patrolled by an international naval coalition, but that the ship's captain increased speed and managed to outrun the skiffs.

All passengers and crew are safe and there was no damage to the vessel, it said.

Security corridor

The Nautica was on a 32-day cruise from Rome to Singapore, with stops at ports in Italy, Egypt, Oman, Dubai, India, Malaysia and Thailand, the website said.

Based on that schedule, the liner was headed from Egypt to Oman when it was attacked.

The liner arrived in the southern Oman port city of Salalah on Monday morning, and the passengers toured the city before leaving for the capital, Muscat, on Monday evening, an official of the Oman Tourism Ministry said on Tuesday. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorised to speak to the media.

The US Navy's 5th Fleet, based in Bahrain, said it was aware of the failed hijacking but did not have further details.

International warships patrol the area and have created a security corridor in the pirate-infested waters under a US-led initiative, but the attacks have not abated.

In about 100 attacks on ships off the Somali coast this year, 40 vessels have been hijacked, Choong said. Fourteen remain in the hands of pirates along with more than 250 crew members.

In two if the most daring attacks, pirates seized a Ukrainian freighter loaded with 33 battle tanks in September, and on November 15, a Saudi oil tanker carrying $100m worth of crude oil.

Ukraine's Foreign Ministry spokesperson Vasyl Kyrylych said on Monday that negotiations with Somali pirates holding the cargo ship MV Faina are nearly completed, the Interfax news agency reported.

A spokesperson for the Faina's owner said Sunday that the Somali pirates had agreed on a ransom for the ship and it could be released within days.

Somalia has not had a functioning government since 1991, and pirates have taken advantage of the country's lawlessness to launch attacks on foreign shipping from the Somali coast. About 100 ships have been attacked so far this year.

Somali prime minister Nur Hassan Hussein said on Tuesday that his country has been torn apart by 18 years of civil war and cannot stop piracy alone.

'Tremendous effort' needed

"The piracy problem is part of the legacy of the situation of the country. This 18 years of civil war is followed by disorder," Hussein said in an interview in the Kenyan capital of Nairobi.

Stopping piracy is "not something Somalia can do alone. This needs a tremendous effort", he said.

Hussein has appealed for international troops, as his government's Ethiopian allies have said they would pull out their forces by the end of the year.

The Ethiopians are all that has stood between the shaky administration and Islamic insurgents who have seized control of all of southern Somalia except for the capital and the parliamentary seat of Baidoa.

- AP