NAIROBI: Pirates near Somalia chased and shot at a US cruise liner with more than 1,000 people on board but failed to hijack the vessel, a maritime official said yesterday.
The liner, carrying 656 international passengers and 399 crew members, was sailing in the Gulf of Aden on Sunday when it encountered six pirates in two speedboats, said International Maritime Bureau chief Noel Choong.
The pirates fired at the passenger liner but the larger boat was faster than the pirates’ vessels, he said. “It is very fortunate that the liner managed to escape,” Choong said, urging all ships to remain vigilant in the area.
The US Navy’s 5th Fleet, based in Bahrain, said it was aware of the failed hijacking but did not have further details.
Ship owner Oceania Cruises Inc. identified the vessel as the M/S Nautica. In a statement on its website, the company said pirates fired eight rifle shots at the liner as it sailed along a maritime corridor patrolled by an international naval coalition, but that the ship’s captain increased speed and managed to outrun the skiffs. All passengers and crew are safe and there was no damage to the vessel, it said.
The Nautica was on a 32-day cruise from Rome to Singapore, with stops at ports in Italy, Egypt, Oman, the UAE, India, Malaysia and Thailand, the website said. Based on that schedule, the liner was headed from Egypt to Oman when it was attacked.
The liner arrived in the southern Omani port city of Salalah on Monday morning, and the passengers toured the city before leaving for the capital, Muscat, Monday evening, an official of the Oman Tourism Ministry said yesterday.
The head of the shipping agency’s branch in Salalah had contact with the liner there. “They talked about pirates opening fire at their ship off the Somali shores,” Khalil Shaker told reporters. He said he had no details of the attack.
International warships patrol the area and have created a security corridor in the pirate-infested waters under a US-led initiative, but the attacks have not abated.
In about 100 attacks on ships off the Somali coast this year, 40 vessels have been hijacked, Choong said. Fourteen remain in the hands of pirates along with more than 250 crew members.
In two of the most daring attacks, pirates seized a Ukrainian freighter loaded with 33 battle tanks in September, and on Nov. 15, a Saudi Aramco supertanker carrying $100 million worth of crude oil.
Ukraine’s Foreign Ministry spokesman Vasyl Kyrylych said Monday that negotiations with Somali pirates holding the cargo ship MV Faina are nearly completed, the Interfax news agency reported.
A spokesman for the Faina’s owner said Sunday that the Somali pirates had agreed on a ransom for the ship and it could be released within days.
Meanwhile, Somalia’s influential Islamic Courts Union leader Sheikh Hassan Dahir Aweys called on pirates to immediately release the Saudi supertanker and other foreign vessels.
“We are calling for the immediate release of all international vessels under the command of Somali pirates,” Aweys told AFP from the Etitrean capital Asmara.
Aweys said the pirates would have been stamped out if Somalia were still under the Islamic group’s control.
“We are the only force that could eliminate piracy in the Somalia waters but the world refused to give us the opportunity to rule Somalia, despite the will of the vast majority of the people of Somalia.
“If we are given the opportunity to fight piracy and general lawlessness we can do that comfortably. Piracy is part of lawlessness and, during our months of Islamic leadership, pirates were underground,” he said.
Aweys ruled out any mediation effort on the part of his group. “As a leader of a liberation organization, I personally can’t talk to gangs and mediate the release of the ships in the Gulf of Aden,” he said.
He said the pirates, negotiating multimillion-dollar ransoms for the release of foreign vessels and their crews, “are dealing with the world as if they were legitimate agencies, by talking about ransom money.”
“We are the only force to deal with such criminals,” he added.
Aweys equated the rampant piracy to the intervention of Ethiopian forces in his country. “It is so painful to see Somalia taken by Ethiopian colonial occupation and crazy pirates. Both are the same and undermine human value.
The UN Security Council yesterday renewed its authorization for countries to use military force against pirates operating off Somalia.
The US-drafted resolution, adopted unanimously by the 15-nation council, extends for one year the right of countries with permission from Somalia’s transitional government to enter Somali waters to pursue and attack pirates.
“The international community is sending a very strong signal of its determination to deal with piracy,” said French UN Ambassador Jean-Maurice Ripert.
He told reporters it would enable the European Union to start an air and naval operation off Somalia on Dec. 8. The operation is expected to involve five to six ships at any given time, plus maritime surveillance aircraft.
“We think it will act both as a deterrent and also (provide) some immediate capacity to follow on and pursue pirates, if we can catch them,” Ripert said.
