Somalia, December 29: Somali pirates have hijacked a German-owned freighter as it headed to Greece from the United Arab Emirates with 8 crew members on board, the European Union anti-piracy mission said.
“The 5,200-ton merchant vessel — registered in Antigua and Barbuda — was carrying petroleum products and was en route from Jebel Ali in the UAE to San Nicholas in Greece when the attack occurred early on Tuesday,” according to a statement released by the EU mission .
The statement added that the incident happened approximately 175 nautical miles northeast of the Omani port of Salalah. The cargo ship has a crew of eight – seven Filipinos and a Romanian.
The EU naval task force said the pirates probably used a captured ship, identified as the Motivator, to launch their attack.
The waters off the Indian Ocean coast of Somalia are considered the world’s most dangerous for persistent piracy attempts in the area.
The Gulf of Aden, which links the Indian Ocean with the Suez Canal and the Mediterranean Sea, is the quickest route for more than 20,000 vessels traveling from Asia to Europe and the Americas.
However, attacks by the heavily armed Somali pirates in speedboats have prompted some of the world’s largest shipping firms to switch routes from the Suez Canal and send cargo vessels around southern Africa, causing a hike in shipping costs.
In November, a UN report said that the number of successful hijackings by Somali pirates has climbed in 2010, in addition to becoming more violent and expanded in terms of their zone of carrying out attacks.
The pirates managed to stage 37 successful hijackings in the first 10 months of 2010, up from 33 in the same period of 2009, the UN report said.
Somalia, located in the strategic Horn of Africa, does not have a functional government, and the Transitional Federal Government does not have much control beyond the capital city Mogadishu.
The latest report by the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) says thousands of civilians have been injured in recent months in clashes throughout the Horn of Africa country.
—Agencies