Pirates hijack another ship

2006-01-26 09:26

Nairobi - Pirates have hijacked yet another merchant ship off the coast of lawless Somalia despite the US navy's seizure there last week of a suspected pirate vessel, maritime officials said on Wednesday.

In a sign that a year-old spate of brazen piracy in Somali waters may be far from over, boat-borne gunmen attacked the ship on Sunday, just a day after a US naval destroyer tracked down and seized their alleged colleagues, they said.

"Pirates armed with guns hijacked a general cargo ship underway," the International Maritime Board (IMB) said in the latest edition of its weekly piracy reports.

"They fired warning shots and threatened the 20 crew members," it said. "They are demanding a ransom for the release of the crew and ship."

The report from the Kuala Lumpur-based IMB gave no further details of the incident but maritime officials in East Africa said they understood the ship carried the flag of the United Arab Emirates.

Is it a 'war zone'?

Sunday's incident was the 38th reported attack on commercial shipping off the unpatrolled Somali coast since March but the first since the Bahrain-based US Fifth Fleet ordered action against the pirates.

A day earlier, after getting a tip from the IMB about an attempted hijacking and shadowing the suspect vessel overnight, the USS Winston Churchill fired warning shots at and intercepted a dhow carrying a band of suspected pirates about 85km off Somalia's central eastern coast.

On boarding the ship, US sailors discovered a number of small weapons believed to have been used in pirate attacks and took 26 people - 16 Indians and 10 Somalis - into custody for questioning.

According to the IMB, which said it was briefed on the US operation, some of the men said their ship had itself been hijacked by pirates who were using it to stage attacks on merchant vessels in the region.

Although US Navy ships have intervened in hijacking incidents in the area in the past, including firing warning shots at pirate ships, Saturday's was the first in which they seized a suspect vessel or its crew.

Many in the region saw it as an indication the United States was prepared to become more involved in patrolling the waters following appeals from Somalia's largely powerless transitional government last year for international help.

Somalia has had no functioning central administration since the 1991 ouster of strongman Mohamed Siad Barre and pirates have increasingly taken advantage of the lack of authority to ply the 3 700km coast.

The surge in attacks has prompted dire warnings for mariners to stay at least 370km from the coast and sparked calls for the area to be declared a war zone.

- AFP