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Global

Russian warship frees hijacked tanker, no crew hurt


    By Ludmila Danilova

    MOSCOW (Reuters) - A Russian warship on Thursday freed a Russian-owned oil tanker that had been hijacked off the coast of Yemen, tanker owner Novorossiysk Shipping Company told Reuters.

    "Pirates have released the tanker.... All crew on board the tanker are alive and well," a spokeswoman for the shipping company said by telephone.

    Somali pirates hijacked the China-bound, Russian-owned MV Moscow University tanker 350 miles (565 km) off the coast of Yemen on Wednesday morning, seizing $52 million (34 million pounds) worth of crude oil and the ship with 23 crew on board.

    Novorossiysk's spokeswoman added that "during more than 20 hours of siege, pirates were not able to take a single member of crew hostage." The company said the crew were in a safe room, that was inaccessible to the hijackers.

    An unnamed official from the Russian Defence Ministry told Reuters that Somali pirates had been captured in an armed rescue mission. It was not immediately clear whether any pirates had been injured.

    The Russian navy declined to comment.

    Maritime officials in Nairobi could not immediately confirm that the tanker had been freed, while a pirate based in the town of Hobyo on the Somali coast said he had lost contact with the tanker.

    "We have no information about a rescue but we have lost contact with them since midnight," the pirate, who identified himself as Abdi, told Reuters by telephone.

    "We had wanted to send reinforcements before we lost contact," he added.

    Somali sea bandits continue to outwit an international fleet of warships in the busy shipping lane linking Europe with Asia, raking in tens of millions of dollars in ransoms.

    Some oil tankers are sailing around southern Africa and further east into the Indian Ocean away from Somalia's coastline to avoid the Gulf of Aden and pirates who are striking deeper out at sea, shipping experts say.

    (Additional reporting by Richard Lough in Nairobi, Abdi Guled in Mogadishu, Toni Vorobyova in Moscow, writing by Amie Ferris-Rotman in Moscow; Editing by Michael Roddy)