Bloomberg
Wednesday, September 03, 2008
The name of the vessel isn't known and it wasn't immediately clear how many people were on board when it was seized, Mwangura said in an interview today from Nairobi in neighboring Kenya. The British Broadcasting Corp. reported that the vessel, which may have been a yacht or a cruise ship, was carrying an unspecified number of French tourists.
``What we have is that a French vessel was hijacked but we don't have details about it,'' Mwangura said. ``We don't know whether it is a big ship or small.''
At least eight foreign-owned vessels have been seized off the coast of Somalia since the beginning of last month. The Horn of Africa nation's 3,300-kilometer (2,060-mile) coastline is considered one of the world's most dangerous stretches of water because of piracy. The number of attacks on vessels more than tripled last year to 31 incidents, compared with 10 a year earlier, according to the International Maritime Bureau, or IMB.
Ships that have been seized include two owned by MISC Bhd., the world's biggest owner of liquefied natural gas tankers, which were hijacked last month. The Kuala Lumpur-based company said yesterday it stopped vessels from using the Gulf of Aden until additional security measures are put in place.
The IMB has advised all vessels to stay at least 200 nautical miles (370 kilometers) from the Somali coast.
Somalia is at the entrance to the Gulf of Aden, which leads to the Red Sea and the 166-kilometer (104-mile) Suez Canal, one of the world's most important shipping channels.
To contact the reporter on this story: Hamsa Omar in Mogadishu via Johannesburg at [email protected].