Hijacked Saudi tanker approaching Somalia

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By Abdiqani Hassan

BOSASSO, Somalia (Reuters) - A Saudi supertanker hijacked by pirates with a $100 million (66.6 mllion pound) oil cargo in the largest ever such seizure was approaching the north Somali coast on Tuesday, maritime sources said.

"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.

A pirate associate in Eyl, reached by Reuters 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."

The remote coastal village of Eyl, in the semi-autonomous province of Puntland, is a base for 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 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 European Union, to protect one of the world's busiest shipping areas.

U.S, French and Russian warships are also off Somalia.

Mwangura, whose Mombasa-based group has been monitoring piracy for years, predicted the pirates would probably guard the Sirius about eight miles offshore. "The world has never seen anything like this ... The Somali pirates have hit the jackpot."

The U.S. navy, which broke news of Sirius' capture and said it was en route to Somalia, could not confirm its location on Tuesday. "The ship is still transiting," said a spokesman.

NIGERIAN 'MOTHER-SHIP'?

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 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 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.

"We are against hijacking of ships because it imposes economic hardships on the starving Somali people," one Islamist spokesman, Abdirahim Isse Adow, told Reuters, referring to the damaging impact on local food prices.

"We cannot do anything about piracy unless we become as strong as 2006 when we protected the land and waters."

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.

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

In a separate incident, Britain said it had handed over to Kenyan authorities on Tuesday, for prosecution, eight suspected pirates it caught at sea last week. U.K. Armed Forces Minister Bob Ainsworth, on a visit to Nairobi, also called for the release of the two Britons and other crew on the Sirius.

"We are under no illusions about the scale of the challenge presented by piracy," he told reporters.

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