Mogadishu, January 16: Somali pirates have hijacked a South Korean cargo ship with 21 crew members on board in the Indian Ocean as it was sailing from the United Arab Emirates to Sri Lanka.
The 10,000-ton ship, Samho Jewelry, was attacked by a boat on Saturday afternoon. It was hijacked in the waters between Oman and India, Yonhap news agency reported.
The freighter has a crew of eight South Koreans, two Indonesians, and 11 Burmese nationals, according to an unnamed South Korean foreign ministry official.
“The current location of the ship has not been found yet, but the crew seems to be unharmed,” the official said.
The South Korean foreign ministry has set up a task force to deal with the incident.
The merchant vessel reportedly belongs to Samho Shipping Company, which has headquarters in South Korea’s southern port city of Busan.
The waters off the Indian Ocean coast of Somalia are considered the most dangerous in the world for persistent piracy attempts.
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, becoming more violent and expanding in terms of the zone of the attacks.
——–Agencies