Vessel-seizing pirates have struck again — this time hijacking a ship carrying 20 Americans, an event that will refocus international attention on this growing martime problem.
A U.S.-flagged cargo ship that routinely works under contract to the Department of Defense and its all-American crew were hijacked today by pirates operating off the Horn of Africa.
The crew of 20 is believed to be safe and the vessel is heading toward the coast of Somalia, maritime officials said.
The early-morning attack of the Danish-owned cargo ship occurred about 240 nautical miles southeast of the Somali port city of Eyl in the Indian Ocean, according to U.S. naval officials.
The ship’s owner, Norfolk, Va.-based Maersk Line Ltd., a subsidiary of Denmark’s A.P. Moller-Maersk, is a longtime Defense Department shipping contractor, operating at times with top security clearance.
But the hijacked vessel, the Maersk Alabama, was not sailing under a Defense Department contract at the time of the attack, according to Lt. Nathan Christensen, a spokesman from the U.S. 5th Fleet in Bahrain.
A Maersk spokeswoman in Copenhagen said the ship was carrying food and “relief aid,” but she did not know the final destination of the cargo.
The attack marks a rare hijacking of a U.S.-operated ship in Africa, where piracy has been surging along Somalia’s coast and in the Gulf of Aden.
“Every indication is that this is the first time a U.S.-flagged ship has been successfully seized by pirates,” Christensen said.
As we noted HERE pirates have returned to the news and sea-life forefront in recent years, this time operating in a 21st century context. And it appears as if capturing a ship with Americans has been a new goal: in December pirates shot at U.S. cruise ship in a failed hijack attempt.
Here’s a Reuters factbox on ships held by Somali pirates. Meanwhile, Reuters in a report on USA Today’s site also reports that the U.S. crew is reportedly safe:
The seizure of the ship tentatively identified as the Maersk Alabama comes after the Monday hijacking of a British-owned ship.
Andrew Mwangura of the East African Seafarers’ Assistance Program said the crew is believed to be safe.
In the first three months of 2009, the news service says, only eight ships had been hijacked in the busy Gulf of Aden, which links Europe to Asia and the eastern Indian Ocean through the Suez Canal.
Last year, heavily armed Somali pirates hijacked dozens of vessels, took hundreds of crewmembers hostage, often for weeks, and extracted millions of dollars in ransoms.
The AP reports that U.S. officials are trying to get more details about the incident.
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.