Hijacked supertanker said off Somalia

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By Abdiqani Hassan

BOSASSO, Somalia (Reuters) - A Saudi supertanker hijacked by pirates with a $100 million (67 million pound) oil cargo in the largest ever such seizure may have reached the coast of north Somalia, a regional maritime group said on Tuesday.

"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.

He was referring to a remote coastal village in the semi-autonomous province of Puntland used by pirates who have been attacking ships in the Gulf of Aden and Indian Ocean.

They 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 Sirius Star 450 nautical miles southeast of Kenya's Mombasa port, and way beyond the Gulf of Aden where most attacks have taken place this year, is their boldest attack and the culmination of several years' increasing activity.

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

"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.

He predicted the pirates would probably keep the Sirius about eight miles off Eyl, which is heavily protected.

The U.S. navy, which broke news of Sirius' capture and has warships in the area, could not confirm its location on Tuesday.

"The ship is still transiting according to our information," said spokesman Lieutenant Nathan Christensen.

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 November 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 to carry out the attacks, with the mother-ship as a base for their operations.

INTERNATIONAL CREW

Mwangura said he believed the Somali pirates might have had help from others, possibly Nigerians and Yemenis, for this attack. However, he said he had no firm evidence of that.

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.

Given that the pirates are in most cases holding crews hostage, and 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.

Admiral Mike Mullen, chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, said military action would be complicated by hostages and ransom demands. "I'm stunned by the range of it," said Mullen.

The Sirius had been heading for the United States 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.

Analysts say, however, that all sides in the Somali conflict are benefiting from the spoils of piracy. International Maritime Bureau, a piracy watchdog, said there had been 92 attacks off Somalia this year and 36 ships had been hijacked.

"We have warned all ships that pirates appear to be expanding their activities off Kenya ... This is a new area, it has a lot of vessels," the bureau head Noel Chong said.

The Sirius is Liberian-flagged and owned and operated by state oil giant Saudi Aramco's shipping unit Vela International.

Sky News quoted the shipping company as saying negotiations had begun with the pirates. Vela declined to comment on the report but said the rest of its global shipping operations were continuing as usual.

(Additional reporting by Andrew Cawthorne in Nairobi; Kuala Lumpur bureau; Writing by Andrew Cawthorne in Nairobi; Editing by David Clarke and Dominic Evans)

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