WORLD> Africa
Hijacked supertanker 'anchored off Somalia'
(Agencies)
Updated: 2008-11-19 07:48

A Saudi supertanker hijacked by pirates with a $100 million oil cargo was thought to have anchored off Somalia Tuesday, the shipping arm of state oil giant Saudi Aramco said.

"All 25 crew members on board are believed to be safe," Vela International said in a statement. "At this time, Vela is awaiting further contact from the pirates in control of the vessel."

The Sirius Star is the biggest vessel ever hijacked. It was seized in the Indian Ocean off east Africa on Sunday in the boldest attack by pirates operating from lawless Somalia.

The pirates have driven up insurance costs, forced some ships to go round South Africa instead of through the Suez Canal, secured millions of dollars in ransoms and now carried out one of the most spectacular strikes in maritime history.

The capture of the Star 830 km southeast of Kenya's Mombasa port, and way beyond the Gulf of Aden where most attacks have taken place this year, is the culmination of several years' increasing activity.

"The latest attack looks like a deliberate two fingers from some very bright Somalis. Anyone who describes them as a bunch of camel herders needs to think again," a Nairobi-based Somalia specialist said.

The seizure was carried out despite an international naval response, including from the NATO alliance and the European Union, to protect one of the world's busiest shipping areas.

US, French and Russian warships are also off Somalia.

Vela did not say exactly where the Sirius Star was anchored. Andrew Mwangura, coordinator of the East African Seafarers' Association, had said he believed it could be near the remote coastal village of Eyl, a pirate stronghold in the semi-autonomous province of Puntland.

"The world has never seen anything like this ... The Somali pirates have hit the jackpot," said Mwangura, whose Mombasa-based group has been monitoring piracy for years.

A pirate associate in Eyl, reached via telephone from Puntland's main port Bosasso, said the ship was on its way to the coast, but he could not say exactly where. It may in fact dock further south than Eyl, he said, calling himself "Bashir".

High-profile strike

Mwangura, who bases information on shipping groups in the area plus family of crew and pirates, said he thought a hijacked Nigerian tug was a "mother-ship" for the Nov 15 seizure.

"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 and satellite phones to coordinate attacks, with the mother-ship as a base for their operations.

The seizure of the Sirius, which is three times the size of an aircraft carrier, follows another high-profile strike earlier this year by the pirates when they captured a Ukrainian ship carrying 33 tanks and other military equipment.

They are still holding that vessel and about a dozen others, with more than 200 crew members hostage. Given that the pirates are well-armed with grenades, machineguns and rocket-launchers, foreign forces in the area are steering clear of direct attacks. Ship owners are negotiating ransoms.

The Sirius held as much as 2 million barrels of oil, more than a quarter of Saudi Arabia's daily exports. It had been heading for the US via the Cape of Good Hope at the southern tip of Africa. It had 25 crew from Croatia, Britain, the Philippines, Poland and Saudi Arabia.

Chaos onshore in Somalia, where Islamist forces are fighting a Western-backed government, has spawned this year's upsurge in piracy. The Islamists, who are close to the capital Mogadishu, say that if they take control they will stop piracy as they did during a brief, six-month rule of south Somalia in 2006.