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Pirates board Chinese ship, but hijack foiled

(China Daily)
Updated: 2008-12-18 07:32

KUALA LUMPUR - Pirates boarded a Chinese cargo ship off the coast of Somalia but failed to hijack the vessel on Wednesday, thanks to quick action by a naval force patrolling the area, a maritime official said.

Pirates on a speedboat approach one of their mother boats docked near Eyl, Somalia in footage taken November 2008. [Agencies]

The ship, owned by China Communications Construction Co, was attacked in the Gulf of Aden at 12:43 pm (Beijing time). Thirty Chinese sailors were aboard the Zhenhua 4, which is registered in St Vincent.

The attack occurred in the same area where a Malaysian-owned tugboat and a Turkish vessel were seized on Tuesday, said Noel Choong, who heads the International Maritime Bureau's (IMB) piracy reporting center in Kuala Lumpur.

He said the Chinese ship sent a distress message to the IMB after it was chased by nine pirates in speedboats in the Gulf of Aden.

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The pirates managed to board the ship but the crew members locked themselves in their cabins to prevent the bandits from entering, he said.

Choong said the IMB quickly sought help from a multi-coalition naval force, which dispatched two helicopters and a warship to the area.

"The helicopters arrived at the scene first and helped deter the hijacking. They fired at the pirates, forcing them to flee the ship. Nobody was injured" in the nearly five-hour high sea drama, he said.

"The Chinese ship is very fortunate to have escaped. This is a rare case where pirates have boarded the ship but failed to hijack it," he added.

Choong said there were also three other reported attacks in the vicinity since Friday - on a Singapore oil tanker, an Italian cargo ship and a Greek vessel but all managed to escape after intervention by the coalition force.

Rampant piracy off the coast of Somalia this year has earned gunmen millions of dollars in ransom, hiked shipping insurance costs and sent foreign navies rushing to patrol shipping lanes off the Horn of Africa nation.

Nineteen ships and nearly 400 crew were being held in pirate hideouts along the Somali coast, including a Saudi supertanker with 2 million barrels of oil and a Ukrainian cargo ship with 33 tanks.