Supertanker crew safe as yet another vessel taken

HIJACK DRAMA: A statement released on Tuesday said that the 25 crew members on board Sirius Star were believed to be safe.

A Saudi supertanker seized by pirates with a $100 million oil cargo in the world's biggest ship hijacking reached Somalia on Tuesday, as another ship, a Hong-Kong registered vessel was captured in the perilous waters off the lawless state.

The US Navy said pirates had transported the Sirius Star - seized 450 nautical miles southeast off Kenya at the weekend in the boldest strike to date by Somali pirates - to Haradheere port half-way up the Horn of Africa nation's long coastline.

"At this time, Vela is awaiting further contact from the pirates in control of the vessel," said Dubai-based owner Vela International, shipping arm of state oil giant Saudi Aramco.

Vela said the 25 crew members were believed to be safe -- they are from Croatia, Britain, the Philippines, Poland and Saudi Arabia -- and their safety was the top priority.

"The Saudi ship has anchored at a port near Haradheere, in Mudug central region," Abdulqadir Muse Yusuf, Puntland's assistant minister for fisheries told Reuters.

Increasingly brazen pirate activity in the Gulf of Aden and Indian Ocean waters off Somalia has driven up insurance costs, forced some ships to go round South Africa instead of through the Suez Canal, and secured millions of dollars in ransoms.

The capture of the Star is one of the most spectacular strikes in maritime history.

"It looks like a deliberate two fingers from some very bright Somalis. Anyone who describes them as a bunch of camel herders needs to think again," one Somalia analyst said.

The seizure was carried out despite an international naval response, including from the NATO alliance and European Union, to protect one of the world's busiest shipping routes.

US, French and Russian warships are also off Somalia.

Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Saud Al-Faisal said his country would throw its weight behind a European-led initiative to step up security in shipping lanes off Africa's east coast.

"This outrageous act by the pirates, I think, will only reinforce the resolve of the countries of the Red Sea and internationally to fight piracy," he said.

But underlining the difficulty of containing the problem, China's official Xinhua agency said on Tuesday a Hong Kong ship loaded with grain and bound for Iran was hijacked by pirates in the Gulf of Aden.

The Delight, with 25 crew members on board, was captured off the Yemen coast at around 0600 GMT and is currently sailing towards Somalia, an official at Hong Kong's Maritime Rescue Coordination Centre told Reuters by telephone.

Andrew Mwangura, coordinator of the East African Seafarers' Association, said he thought a hijacked Nigerian tug was a "mother-ship" for the Nov. 15 seizure of the Saudi vessel.

The fully-loaded supertanker was probably low in the water and therefore easy to board by ladder or rope, he said.

Normally, well-armed and sophisticated Somali pirates use speedboats and satellite phones to coordinate attacks, with the mother-ship as a base for their operations.

The seizure of the Star, three times the size of an aircraft carrier, followed another high-profile strike earlier this year by the pirates when they captured a Ukrainian ship carrying 33 tanks and other military equipment.

They are still holding that vessel and about a dozen others, with more than 200 crew members hostage. Given that the pirates are well-armed with grenades, machineguns and rocket-launchers, foreign forces in the area are steering clear of direct attacks.

Ship owners are negotiating ransoms in most cases.

Middle East energy analyst Samuel Ciszuk said this would almost certainly be the case with the Sirius. "Due to Somalia's status as a failed state and the anarchic nature of politics in the country, the negotiators have no other option but to respond to the pirates. There is no government which can intervene."

The Sirius held as much as 2 million barrels of oil, more than a quarter of Saudi Arabia's daily exports.

It had been heading for the United States via the Cape of Good Hope at the southern tip of Africa.

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