'Terrorists could be to blame'

2005-11-07 07:36

Sydney - Terrorists, not pirates, may be behind the weekend attack on the luxury cruise liner off the east coast of Africa, said Australian foreign minister Alexander Downer on Monday.

The 22 Australians among 151 passengers and 161 crew aboard the Seabourn Spirit when it was attacked on Saturday by machine-gun fire and rocket-propelled grenades have been interviewed by Australian consular officials.

"It's quite possible they would just have been pirates," Downer told Australia's ABC Radio. "But they were pretty well armed, they had not just small-arms but rocket-propelled grenades. Damage to the ship and killing people, which might have been their motive, is obviously something they could have easily done if the rocket-propelled grenades had worked properly."

The foreign minister said Somalia was a haven for terrorists.

"So maybe they were targeting Americans," Downer said. "We really just don't know, that's just a hypothesis."

About 10 pirates in two small speedboats attacked the ship, which managed to outrun the pirates' boats with only minor damage, about 160km off the Somali coast.

The Seabourn Spirit is anchored off the Seychelles where United States experts are busy disarming the grenades that lodged in the ship but did not explode. - Sapa-dpa

- SAPA