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Hi all,
In that picture of the MV Taipan, is that barbed wire tied to the deck rail? There seems to be a coil of it hanging over the side where the steel side starts to rise near the bow.
regards
GttC
A South Korean shipping firm wants to start talks with Somali pirates on returning a tanker with a cargo of crude oil worth as much as $170 million they seized and freeing the crew taken hostage, an official said today.
The South Korean-operated, Singapore-owned Samho Dream , which can carry more than two million barrels of crude, was seized on Sunday en route from Iraq to the United States.
"We are enlisting a mediator and we will try to enter immediately into negotiations," an official from the shipping firm said.
Local media said the negotiations could take several months. The tanker's crew of five South Koreans and 19 Filipinos was taken hostage when it was seized in the Indian Ocean, about 1,560km east of the Somali coast.
The Samho Dream is now anchored about 4.5km from the Somali coast, and a South Korean destroyer that has been trailing the tanker for days is within striking distance.
A Foreign Ministry spokesman said: "The government's basic stance is that we do not negotiate with pirates. If there is any negotiation, we believe it would be based on wishes of the ship owner."
The destroyer has weapons that can hit targets as far as 32km away. Military officials declined to comment on plans for the use of the war ship, which was deployed last year to protect commercial vessels in the Gulf of Aden and the Indian Ocean.
Increasingly brazen pirate activity has driven up insurance costs, forced some ships to go around South Africa instead of through the Suez Canal, and secured millions of dollars in ransoms.
I hope the somalis are keeping an eye on the world market.
If the owners pay the criminals to release the ship it will create a precedent, and before long Somalia will become a required stop on the oil trade, further pushing the price of crude up.
The Korean Government need to bring the owners to heel.
Catch-22 says they have a right to do anything we can't stop them from doing.
NAIROBI – A Turkish-flagged bulk carrier en route to the Kenyan port of Mombasa has been hijacked, the head of a regional maritime body said yesterday.
The Yasin seized three days ago has been abandoned by Somali pirates, leaving all 25 crew unharmed, Turkish officials say.
The crew locked themselves in the engine room and did not emerge until they knew they were safe.
The US navy has meanwhile clashed with suspected pirates in the Gulf of Aden after they fired on a navy vessel.
Six suspected pirates were captured after the clash.
French forces have captured six suspected pirates in the Indian Ocean after a supply ship was attacked by gunmen in speedboats, the French military said today.
Pirates in two skiffs attacked the La Somme ship overnight on Monday, some 300km off the coast of Somalia. The French fired back and the speedboats fled.
No one was injured and after a brief search of the area, the La Somme discovered the assailants' mother ship. "We found the suspected pirates, petrol and equipment that could be used for anything but fishing," said a spokesman for the military.
It was the second time in six months that the La Somme had come under attack while taking part in a European anti-piracy operation in the area. "In a funny way, the boat looks like a civilian vessel and we think that it was attacked by mistake," said the spokesman.
Somalian Islamist rebels attack pirates, 10 killed
Mogadishu, Somalia (CNN) -- Islamist rebels advanced on a pirate haven in central Somalia and battled government troops in Mogadishu in a clash that killed at least 10 people, ambulance crews and a local journalist reported Sunday.
Fighters from the al Qaeda-linked militia al-Shabaab were advancing on Harardhere, the pirate stronghold on the Somali coast, a local journalist in contact with pirate sources told CNN. The pirates recently captured a boat loaded with weapons from Yemen that were intended for the militia, and had stopped paying bribes to the Islamists, said the journalist, whose identity is not being disclosed for security reasons.
The journalist said a spokesman for al-Shabaab, which is trying to topple Somalia's U.N.-backed transitional government, said the Islamists are only a few kilometers from Harardhere. The journalist reported that the pirates appeared to be retreating from Harardhere to the port town of Hobyo, Somalia with their captured ships.
No further details were immediately available, and the European Union naval force that patrols the waters off Somalia said it had no information about the situation.
U.N. reports have found that Yemen is a source for arms shipments into Somalia despite a longstanding U.N. embargo on weapons. The Yemeni government, which is battling its own al Qaeda uprising, has attempted to crack down on arms dealing within its territory but also faces an influx of Somali refugees.
The advance on Harardhere, about 430 km (270 miles) north of Mogadishu, came the same day a clash between al-Shabaab fighters and government forces left at least 10 people dead and 40 wounded, ambulance crews reported. Heavy shelling followed an attempt by government troops to ambush al-Shabaab fighters, witnesses reported.
Al-Shabaab has ties to al Qaeda and is considered a terrorist organization by the United States, but it has taken control of much of Mogadishu and southern Somalia.
The fighting has escalated a long-running humanitarian crisis in the Horn of Africa nation, which has not had an effective central government since 1991.
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