Somali Pirates Attack Cruise Ship

Passengers on a luxury cruise liner attacked by pirates in the dangerous waters between Yemen and Somalia said Wednesday they were surprised by the assailants' boldness and described hearing the "Pop! Pop! Pop!" of the pirates' rifles firing at the ship.

Sunday's attack on the nearly 600-foot long American-operated M/S Nautica in the Gulf of Aden was the latest evidence that pirates have grown more aggressive, viewing almost any ship on the water as a potential target. But the attack lasted only five minutes and the ship with about 650 passengers and 400 crew members on board sped away quickly and was not seized.

"We didn't think they would be cheeky enough to attack a cruise ship," Wendy Armitage, of Wellington, New Zealand, told The Associated Press shortly after disembarking the ship for a daylong port stop in the Omani capital of Muscat.

"It was very minor really," she said of the attack. "But it was a surprise that they attacked us, and they did fire shots."

In about 100 attacks on ships off the Somali coast this year, 40 vessels have been hijacked. Thirteen ships remain in the hands of pirates along with more than 250 crew members including a Saudi supertanker filled with $100 million worth of crude and a Ukrainian ship loaded with 33 battle tanks.

International warships patrol the area and have created a security corridor in the region under a U.S.-led initiative, but attacks on shipping have not abated.

The cruise liner was traveling from Rome to Singapore, a route that most directly must pass through the dangerous strait between Somalia and Yemen.

During the assault, pirates fired eight rifle shots at the ship, according to its operator, Oceania Cruises, Inc. But the captain ordered passengers inside and accelerated quickly, leaving the pirates far behind in their 20- to 30-foot speedboats.

"I couldn't see them shooting, but I heard them hitting the ship, 'Pop! Pop! Pop!'" said Clyde Thornberg, on vacation from his home in Bend, Ore. "It wasn't really scary because the captain announced for the safety of everybody to get inside and get down, and by that time he was pouring on the coals to the ship and was outrunning them."

According to the U.S. Navy's 5th Fleet, about 21,000 ships cross the Gulf of Aden every year, though the fleet could not say how many cruise liners are included in that figure. The gulf links the Mediterranean Sea, the Suez Canal and the Red Sea to the Indian Ocean.

It was not the first time a cruise liner has been attacked. In 2005, pirates opened fire on the Seabourn Spirit about 100 miles off the Somali coast. The faster cruise ship managed to escape and used a long-range acoustic device — which blasts a painful wave of sound — to distract the pirates.

Several passengers on the Nautica said the crew used a similar device to ward off Sunday's attack, and at least two passengers described hearing two "boom" sounds after the pirates fired their rifles.

The passengers had been briefed before the cruise got under way about potential dangers and on the acoustic device's importance to the vessel's defense.

"We had been reassured that they had these ghetto blasters that would go through them," said Lynne Pincini, of Australia. "Also, they said we could outrun anything, and we were in this corridor."

Separately, pirates freed a hijacked Yemeni cargo ship and its eight crew members, officials said Wednesday. The release Tuesday night came after an appeal by local clan elders and regional officials. Somali state minister Ali Abdi Aware said "no ransom was paid."

The ship was seized last month in the Arabian Sea.

"During discussion the pirates were successfully convinced to release the ship because it always brought commercial goods to the region," said Abdi-nur Faratol, one of the negotiators.

A Yemeni security official had said the pirates were initially demanding a $2 million ransom to release the ship and its crew of three Yemenis, three Somalis and two Panamanians.

Piracy also has disrupted shipments of food aid to Somalia. The United Nations says there are around 300,000 acutely malnourished children in Somalia, but attacks and kidnappings of aid workers have shut down many humanitarian projects.

The European Union announced Wednesday that a flotilla will begin anti-piracy operations off the coast of Somalia next week in the EU's first-ever naval operation.

EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana said six EU and three maritime reconnaissance aircraft will replace a NATO naval force that has been patrolling the region and escorting cargo ships carrying relief aid to Somalia since the end of October.

Though NATO ships have successfully delivered humanitarian supplies to Somalia, they have not been able to stem the upsurge in pirate attacks on foreign shipping in one of the most important shipping lanes in the world.

Cmdr. Peter Reesink, aboard the Dutch ship de Ruyter escorting U.N. food aid to Somalia, said Wednesday that his mission is to protect the ship and he does not rule out using force.

"So if I have to I will destroy the (pirate) ship," he told AP Television News. "We will try to scare them away, we will try to call them on different radio circuits, if that doesn't help we will shoot some flares. If that doesn't help, we will try a shot over the bow first, and if that doesn't work, then we will start to aim and fire directly."

Solana said the EU warships will arrive Monday, and the hand-over with the NATO force will take place Dec. 15.

"These tasks will be done with very robust rules of engagement," Solana told reporters on the sidelines of a meeting of NATO foreign ministers in Belgium.

On Tuesday, the U.N. Security Council extended for another year its authorization for countries to enter Somalia's territorial waters, with advance notice, and use "all necessary means" to stop piracy and armed robbery at sea.

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

Indian Navy Bombs Somalia Pirate Ship

An Indian warship destroyed a pirate ship in the Gulf of Aden and gunmen from Somalia seized two more vessels despite a large international naval presence off their lawless country.


The buccaneers have taken a Thai fishing boat, a Greek bulk carrier and a Hong Kong-flagged ship heading to Iran since Saturday's spectacular capture of a Saudi supertanker carrying $100 million of oil, the biggest ship hijacked in history.

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The explosion of piracy off Somalia this year has driven up insurance costs, made some shipping companies divert around South Africa and prompted an unprecedented military response from NATO, the European Union and others.


"The pirates are sending out a message to the world that 'we can do what we want, we can think the unthinkable, do the unexpected'," Andrew Mwangura, coordinator of the East African Seafarers' Assistance Program, told Reuters in Mombasa.


India's navy said one of its warships, INS Tabar, fought Somali pirates in the Gulf of Aden and destroyed their vessel after a brief battle late Tuesday.


"Fire broke out on the vessel and explosions were heard, possibly due to exploding ammunition that was stored on the vessel," the navy said, adding that two speed boats sped away.


The International Maritime Bureau said pirates from the Horn of Africa nation had hijacked a Thai fishing boat with 16 crew. That followed the capture of a Hong Kong-flagged ship carrying grain bound for Iran.

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Mwangura's group said a Greek bulk carrier had also been seized, but an official at Greece's Merchant Marine Ministry told Reuters in Athens that no such incident had been recorded.


The sharp increase in attacks at sea this year off the poor and chaotic country has been fueled by a growing Islamist insurgency onshore -- gun battles broke out again in Mogadishu Wednesday -- and the lure of multi-million-dollar ransoms.


Somalia's Prime Minister Nur Hassan Hussein told Reuters naval patrols would not stop piracy and appealed for more help to tackle criminal networks with links beyond his country.


No ransom has been demanded so far for the Saudi supertanker Sirius Star, which the pirates seized after dodging international naval patrols in their boldest strike yet.


A spokesman for the owners, Saudi Aramco, said the company hoped to hear from the hijackers later Wednesday. One Somali website said the attackers were demanding $250 million.


The Sirius Star was seized 450 nautical miles southeast of Mombasa, far beyond the gangs' usual area of operations. It was believed to be anchored near Eyl, a former Somali fishing village that is now a well-defended pirate base.

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TANKER SPOTTED


"Eyl residents told me they could see the lights of a big ship far out at sea that seems to be the tanker," Aweys Ali, chairman of Somalia's Galkayo region, told Reuters by telephone.


Local officials said it had been sighted further south on Tuesday near Haradheere, in Mudug central region.


The Sirius held as much as 2 million barrels of oil, more than a quarter of Saudi Arabia's daily exports, and had been heading for the United States via the Cape of Good Hope.

More of the world's big shipping firms are diverting their fleets via the Cape, experts say. But there is little evidence that big oil tanker firms carrying most of the world's crude are avoiding the Suez Canal, although many are expressing deep disquiet about Somali pirate activity.

Somali gunmen are believed to be holding about a dozen ships in the Eyl area and more than 200 hostages. Among those vessels is a Ukrainian ship loaded with 33 tanks and other weapons that was captured in another high-profile strike earlier this year.

Chinese state media said Wednesday a Hong Kong cargo ship taken in September had been freed and all 25 crew were safe.

The Sirius Star was seized despite an international naval effort, including by NATO, to guard one of the world's busiest shipping routes. Warships from the United States, France, Russia and India are stationed off Somalia.

But experts say deep pessimism over the prospects of any peace process onshore, bitter memories of disastrous past interventions, and the need to put out fires elsewhere -- from Afghanistan to Congo -- have snuffed out any real will to act.

"There are no discussions in NATO on dealing with what is the root cause -- which is political instability," an alliance spokesman said of the Islamist insurgency.

Given that the pirates are well armed with grenades, heavy machineguns and rocket-launchers, most foreign navies have steered clear of direct confrontation once ships have been hijacked, for fear of putting hostages at risk. In most cases, the owners of hijacked ships are trying to negotiate ransoms.

British Royal Navy Commodore Keith Winstanley, deputy commander of the Combined Maritime Forces in the Middle East, said coalition forces could not be everywhere.

"The pirates will go somewhere we are not," he told shipping weekly Fairplay, part of Jane's Information Group. "If we patrol the Gulf of Aden then they will go to Mogadishu. If we go to Mogadishu, they will go to the Gulf of Aden."

Somali Pirates Seize another Ship

Somali pirates released a Japanese chemical tanker and its crew, but seized another one in the Gulf of Aden, despite the presence of several warships patrolling the area, officials said on Sunday.

They released the Stolt Valor and its crew of 18 Indians, two Filipinos, a Russian and Bangladeshi, said Andrew Mwangura who runs the Kenya chapter of the Seafarers Assistance Programme. The vessel had been seized on September 15.

"The ship was released on Saturday," he told AFP.


An Indian maritime official confirmed the release, said the crew were in good health and the freighter was headed to Mumbai.

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"They are safe, they have been released. It will be another 40 hours until they reach the safe zone and another three days for them to reach India," National Union of Indian Seafarers (NUIS) spokesman Sunil Nair told AFP by telephone from Mumbai.


"They should be coming back to Mumbai either by plane or by sea. They are moving towards the nearest port. They are all physically fit."


Seema Goel, whose husband, Prabhat, is captain of the vessel, said she had been contacted by the ship's Japanese owners. The ship would reach India in four to five days, she said.


The ship is registered in Panama to Ocean Carrier Transit, which owns 12 other freighters, although the owner is Japan's Central Marine, officials said.


Nair confirmed that a ransom had been paid. The pirates had demanded payment of 2.5 million dollars but he said he didn't know whether the entire amount had been paid.

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NUSI secretary general Abdulgani Y. Serang said a ransom had "definitely" been paid, but he declined to say how much, Press Trust of India news agency reported.


Indian maritime unions had previously complained that the government in New Delhi had failed to secure the ship's release. Its members had threatened to refuse to sail in the pirate-infested waters unless action was taken.


But as the Stolt Valor headed home, Mwangura reported that Somali pirates had seized another vessel, the 20,000-ton Japanese ship, "Chemstar Venus", in another attack the previous day.


"The ship was hijacked on Saturday," about 150 kilometres east of the Gulf of Aden, he added.


The freighter had a crew of 18 Filipinos and five South Koreans, Mwangura added.

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South Korea, India and several other nations are considering sending warships to the region, after a number of ships and fishing trawlers from Asia were hijacked and only released after ransoms were paid.


According to the International Maritime Bureau, at least 83 ships have been attacked off Somalia since January, of which 33 were hijacked. Of those, 12 vessels and more than 200 crew were still in the hands of pirates.


Last week, the European Union launched a security operation off the coast of Somalia to combat growing acts of piracy and protect ships carrying aid agency deliveries. It is the EU's first-ever naval mission.


Dubbed Operation Atalanta, the mission, endorsed by the bloc's defence ministers at talks in Brussels, is being led by Britain, with its headquarters in Northwood, near London.

Pirates are well organised in the area where Somalia's northeastern tip juts into the Indian Ocean, preying on a key maritime route leading to the Suez Canal through which an estimated 30 percent of the world's oil transits.

They operate high-powered speedboats and are heavily armed, sometimes holding ships for weeks until they are released for large ransoms paid by governments or owners.

NATO warships, along with ships and aircraft from several other nations have been deployed in the region to protect commercial shipping.

Somalia has lacked an effective government since the 1991 ouster of president Mohamed Siad Barre touched off a bloody power struggle that has defied numerous attempts to restore stability.