Crew of seized Saudi supertanker with Pinoys safe says ship owner
abs-cbnNEWS.com | 11/18/2008 8:21 PM
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All 25 crew members, which include those from the Philippines, on board an oil tanker which was seized by Somali pirates off the coast of Somalia last November 16 are reportedly safe.
According to the Web site of Vela International Marine Ltd, all Sirius Star crew are reported safe and that the ship is fully laden.
The Sirius Star is an oil tanker belonging to the Vela International Marine Ltd which was seized by suspected Somali pirates approximately 420 nautical miles off the coast of Somalia.
Vela said it is a corporation registered in the Republic of Liberia and is a totally owned subsidiary of Saudi Aramco with its headquarters in Dubai, United Arab Emirates.
“Vela response teams have been established and are working to ensure the safe release of the crew members and the vessel,” the company’s press statement released Monday stated.
A report from Reuters stated that the Saudi supertanker hijacked by pirates with a $100 million oil cargo in the largest ever such seizure has reached the coast of north Somalia.
"Some people are saying they have spotted a huge vessel off Eyl. It must be the supertanker," Andrew Mwangura, coordinator of the East African Seafarers' Association, told Reuters, referring to a remote coastal village used by Somali pirates.
Sirius Star carried 25 crew members from Croatia, Britain, Philippines, Poland and Saudi Arabia, according to a US Navy statement. The 318,000-ton vessel, launched earlier this year, is flagged in Liberia.
The capture of the Sirius Star 450 nautical miles southeast of Kenya's Mombasa port is the furthest and boldest strike to date by Somali pirates.
The seizure was carried out despite an international naval response to protect the busy shipping lanes off Somalia in the Gulf of Aden and the Indian Ocean.
"The world has never seen anything like this," added Mwangura, whose group has been monitoring piracy off Somalia for years. He said the pirates would probably keep the Sirius about eight miles off Eyl.
Mwangura, who bases his information on shipping organizations in the region plus relatives of both crew and pirates, said he believed a hijacked Nigerian tugboat was used as a "mother-ship" in Monday's extraordinary capture.
"The supertanker was fully loaded, so it was probably low in the water and not that difficult to board," he said, adding that the pirates probably used a ladder or hooked a rope to the side.
Normally, the increasingly well-armed and sophisticated Somali pirates use speedboats to carry out the attacks, with the mother ship as a base for their operations.
Mwangura said he believed the Somali pirates might have had help from others, possibly Nigerians and Yemenis, for this attack, given its distance from Somalia and the scale of the attack. However, he said he had no firm evidence of that.
US Navy stunned by reach of pirates
The Sirius Star, the size of three soccer fields, is the largest ship ever seized by pirates and the hijacking was the furthest out to sea Somali bandits have attacked a ship, according the US Navy.
Shipping experts said that the Somali pirates had shown that few ships sailing the Indian Ocean can be safe.
"The ship is off the coast of Somalia at large, and still under the control of the pirates. There is no information yet about their demands," a spokeswoman for the Bahrain-based US Fifth Fleet told AFP by telephone.
The spokeswoman had on Monday said that the huge, oil-laden prize, which is three times the displacement of a US aircraft carrier, was believed heading towards the Somali port of Eyl.
The top US military officer, Admiral Michael Mullen, said he was "stunned" by the reach of the Somali pirates.
"I'm stunned by the range of it, less so than I am the size," Mullen said.
The pirates are "very good at what they do. They're very well armed. Tactically, they are very good."
Meanwhile, the British navy said on Tuesday it had handed over to the Kenyan authorities eight suspected Somali pirates captured during an incident at sea a week earlier.
Pirates are well organized 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.
"This is incredibly far from Somalia.... It puts a huge ring around Somalia where it isn't safe for international shipping," said Roger Middleton, consultant researcher for London-based think-tank Chatham House.
"These pirates are able to operate in deep water, so they're a needle in a haystack," Nick Davis, head of UK-based Anti-Piracy Maritime Security Solutions, told AFP.
He said even a ship the size of the Sirius Star was relatively easy for pirates -- operating from a mother ship in the area -- to take over once they had approached their target.
The pirates' modus operandi is to approach the ship from the stern with two or three speedboats that far outpace their prey and throw grapnels tied to rope ladders to hook the bridge and board.
The International Maritime Bureau has reported that 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 started a security operation off the coast of Somalia, north of Kenya, to combat growing acts of piracy and protect ships carrying aid agency deliveries. It is the EU's first-ever naval mission.
Dubbed Operation Atlanta, the mission, endorsed by the bloc's defense ministers at talks in Brussels, is being led by Britain, with its headquarters in Northwood, near London.
Somalia has lacked an effective government since the 1991 ouster of president Mohamed Siad Barre, whose ouster started a bloody power struggle that has defied numerous attempts to restore stability. With reports from Reuters and Agence France-Presse
