May 04
THE French navy captured 11 pirates who attacked a warship, mistaking it for a merchant vessel in waters near the Seychelles yesterday.
Two small skiffs attacked the Nivose which moved into the sun to keep its cover.
When the assailants were close enough, the French navy unleashed commandos on outboards and a helicopter to intercept the pirates.
Dozens of suspected pirates have been captured by the French in recent weeks.
Some have been released due to a lack of evidence, while others were transferred either to Somalia's breakaway region of Puntland or Kenya to face trial.
The latest incident has not deterred the Somali pirates.
They hijacked a Pakistani-owned ship on Sunday, bringing the pirates' haul since the start of the year to more than 30 vessels, at least 18 of which are still being held, together with around 300 seamen.
The MV Al-Misan was captured on Friday around 100 kilometres off the capital Mogadishu, said Ahmed Abdi, a pirate commander in the coastal village of Harardhere.
According to elders and traders in the region, it was transporting vehicles and commodities such as sugar and cooking oil for Somali traders and had been sailing from the United Arab Emirates.
"One of the two ships we hijacked ... is confirmed to have been chartered by Somali traders and there are already talks to release it. I think it will happen today,'' Ahmed Abdi told AFP by phone.
One Somali trader with a stake in the hijacked ship's cargo said he was hopeful the vessel would be released soon.
"There are efforts to free the ship and its crew, Somali traders and elders are already negotiating with the pirates and we are hopeful that they will soon release it,'' Abdullahi Moalim Barre told AFP.
The Pakistani authorities said no ship was registered under the name MV Al-Misan.
On Saturday, pirates in Haradhere said they had captured two ships.
One of them was confirmed as the MV Ariana, a bulk carrier transporting 35,000 tonnes of soya beans, with owners in Britain and Greece and a crew of 24 Ukrainians.
Confusion surrounded the identity of the second ship, however, with unconfirmed reports from pirate sources that it was a Ukrainian ship carrying UN vehicles as part of its cargo.
The pirates are enjoying the last few days of favourable weather conditions, in between monsoon seasons that make approaching and boarding large high-sided ships more difficult.
The world's naval powers are dispatching an ever-growing fleet of warships in response to a scourge which is threatening to disrupt one of the world's busiest maritime trade routes.
The Seychelles also announced Sunday that it had apprehended three suspected Somali pirates in its vast exclusive economic zone.
"The three men identified themselves as Somali. They were travelling in a six-metre skiff with several barrels of fuel and water onboard,'' the presidency said.
The Seychelles coast guard ship PS Andromache was alerted to the presence of suspected pirates in its waters by a warship from the European Union naval mission Atalanta on April 30 and caught the three on Saturday.
The operation brings to 12 the number of suspected pirates currently held by the Seychelles authorities following the capture a week earlier of nine Somalis believed to be behind an attack on an Italian cruise ship.
With foreign navies focusing their efforts on the Gulf of Aden, a bottleneck for maritime traffic carrying a large proportion of the world's oil supplies as it enters and exits the Red Sea, pirates have hunted their prey further out into the Indian Ocean.
Source: The Australian
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