RIA Novosti
Friday, December 31, 2010
MOSCOW - Russian tanker NS Africa has managed to evade capture by pirates in the Indian Ocean, the Sovfracht Maritime Bulletin reported on Friday.
NS Africa, which is operated by Russia's Novoship/Sovkomflot company, and Indian tanker Majestic came under fire by pirates in the Mozambique channel on December 24, but the news reached the media only in the past two days because neither of the ships was registered with the anti-piracy authorities that coordinate operations in the Indian Ocean.
"Both attacks failed - the NS Africa was able to outmaneuver the pirates, while the Majestic returned fire, and drove the pirates off," Sovfracht said, citing a spokesperson for the EU Maritime Security Center.
The publication said the pirate attack took place about 200 kilometers (124 miles) east of Quelimane, capital of the central Mozambican province of Zambezia.
"This is the farthest south any Somali pirate has ventured so far," it said.
There were already several attacks on Russian Sovcomflot tankers in Indian Ocean in the past two years. In one of the assaults on May 6 this year, pirates boarded tanker Moscow University, and Russian Navy destroyer Marshal Shaposhnikov was dispatched to rescue the ship.
According to the London-based International Maritime Bureau (IMB), the number of pirate attacks in the Gulf of Aden decreased in the first half of 2010 by 34 percent year-on-year mostly due to the ongoing anti-piracy operation off the Somali coast.
However, Somali pirates have been reported to shift their attacks from their own coast and were responsible for 44% of the 289 piracy incidents on the world's seas in the first nine months of 2010, according to IMB.
Source: RIA Novosti