Pirates Hijack Thai Fishing Boat Near Somalia

By EILEEN NG / AP WRITER

KUALA LUMPUR — Pirates hijacked a Thai fishing boat with 16 crew members off the coast of Somalia, the eighth ship to be seized in the area in the past two weeks, a maritime official said Wednesday.

The boat was seized Tuesday in the Gulf of Aden, said Noel Choong, who heads the International Maritime Bureau's piracy reporting center in Kuala Lumpur. Also Tuesday, an Iranian bulk cargo carrier with 25 crew members was seized in the area, according to earlier reports.

Both vessels were heading to the Middle East when they were hijacked, he said.

The US Navy's 5th Fleet based in Bahrain dispatched an aircraft to the area after the hijackings were reported, and spotted the two vessels in the hands of the pirates, 5th Fleet spokeswoman Cmdr Jane Campbell said.

She said there were no US ships in the vicinity when the hijackings were taking place. In any case, ships would have to be "within 10 minutes responding time to prevent any hijacking," she told The Associated Press.

Choong said the Thai boat, which was flying a Kiribati flag but operated out of Thailand, made a distress call as it was being chased by pirates in two speedboats but the phone line got cut off midway.

Wicharn Sirichaiekawat, manager of Sirichai Fisheries Co, Ltd told The Associated Press that the hijacked Thai ship—the Ekawat Nava 5—sailed from Oman and was headed to Yemen to deliver fishing equipment when it was hijacked about 380 miles (610 kilometers) from Eyl—where he said the pirates were believed to be taking the ship.

He said he did not know what the hijackers' demands might be for the release of the crew—15 Thais and one Cambodian.

"We have informed the families of the crew, but right now, we don't have much more information to give them either," Wicharn said.

The bulk carrier was flying a Hong Kong flag but operated by the Islamic Republic of Iran Shipping Lines. Tuesday's incidents bring the number of attacks in Somali waters this year to 95, with 39 ships hijacked.

Choong said 17 vessels remain in the hands of pirates along with more than 300 crew, including a Ukrainian ship loaded with arms and a Saudi Arabian supertanker carrying $100 million in crude.

Despite increased patrols by a multi-coalition naval force, attacks have continued unabated off Somalia, which is caught up in an Islamic insurgency and has had no functioning government since 1991. Pirates have seized dozens of ships off Somalia's coast in the last year, generally releasing them after ransoms were paid.

NATO has three warships in the Gulf of Aden and the US Navy's 5th Fleet also has ships in the region.

But, Campbell said, naval patrols simply cannot prevent attacks given the vastness of the sea and the high number of vessels passing through the Gulf of Aden—21,000 every year.

"Given the size of the area and given the fact that we do not have naval assets—either ships or airplanes—to be everywhere with every single ship" it would be virtually impossible to prevent every attack, she said.

On Tuesday, a major Norwegian shipping group Odfjell SE ordered its more than 90 tankers to sail around Africa rather than use the Suez Canal after the seizure of the Saudi tanker, MV Sirius Star, on Saturday.

"We will no longer expose our crew to the risk of being hijacked and held for ransom by pirates in the Gulf of Aden," said Terje Storeng, Odfjell's president and chief executive.

The Gulf of Aden, off Somalia, connects to the Red Sea, which in turn is linked to the Mediterranean by the Suez Canal. The route is thousands of miles (kilometers) and many days shorter than going around the Cape of Good Hope off the southern tip of Africa.

Saudi Arabia, which is the world's leading oil producer, has condemned the hijacking and said it will join the international fight against piracy. Somali officials vowed to try to rescue Sirius Star by force if necessary.

The supertanker was anchored Tuesday close to Harardhere, the main pirates' den on the Somali coast, with a full load of 2 million barrels of oil and 25 crew members.

"As usual, I woke up at 3 a.m. and headed for the sea to fish, but I saw a very, very large ship anchored less than three miles off the shore," Abdinur Haji, a fisherman in Harardhere, told the AP in a telephone interview.

"I have been fishing here for three decades, but I have never seen a ship as big as this one," he told The Associated Press in a telephone interview. "There are dozens of spectators on shore trying to catch a glimpse of the large ship."