By IANS,
New Delhi : Eighteen Indian sailors on board a cargo vessel that has been hijacked by pirates off the Yemen coast are safe, an official here said Wednesday.
“As per the information received, all crew on board are safe and the vessel is being taken to Somalia,” the official added.
At about 1.15 p.m. Monday, the ReCAAP Information Sharing Centre Singapore intimated the Indian Coast Guard’s Maritime Rescue Coordination Centre in Mumbai of a distress message from the Mt Stolt Valor.
“The ReCAAP Information Centre was unable to contact the vessel thereafter and the ship’s designated person ashore (DPA) received a brief call from an Indian cadet, Santosh Patil, made over a satellite phone from the masters cabin informing that 15 pirates had boarded the vessel and were taking it to the Somali coast,” a defence ministry official said Wednesday.
ReCAAP is the Regional Cooperation Agreement on Combating Piracy and Armed Robbery against Ships in Asia.
The Hong Kong-registered vessel bound for Mumbai from Suez. Apart from the 18 Indians, the crew comprises two Filipinos, one Bangaldeshi and one Russian.
The incident comes when the Indian Navy is awaiting the government’s nod to provide escort to ships carrying life-saving assistance to Somalia under the aegis of the United Nations, thus boosting its presence in the region, a senior naval official said.
This is part of the Indian Navy’s larger game-plan of playing a bigger role in patrolling the international waters off the Gulf of Aden.
“The navy’s request to protect the UN shipments from pirates is with the government. The Indian Navy is ready and keen to provide its assistance in the UN food programme as it will enhance our credentials as a professional navy in the region,” the official said.
The UN’s World Food Programme (WFP) is responding to urgent humanitarian needs in Somalia. Over 2.4 million Somalis rely on food aid, of which 80 percent arrives by sea.
Food supplies are urgently needed in Somalia but the danger posed by pirates has made delivery difficult by land and sea routes. In July, the WFP had appealed to global naval powers to help protect ships carrying life-saving assistance from pirate attacks, saying that as many as two million Somalis could go hungry without this essential help.
“We cannot claim to be a power with global impact if we do not take up responsibilities. We are ready to protect the ships passing through the Mozambique Channel (between Madagascar and South east Africa) which is plagued by piracy,” the official added.
To the north of Madagascar lies Somalia, whose coastline has been identified by the International Maritime Bureau (IMB) as the area with the highest piracy risk in the world. For India, monitoring the waters off Africa’s east coast is an essential part of security of energy supplies through the Indian Ocean.
While pirates have launched 31 attacks on vessels off Somalia’s eastern and northern coasts so far this year, to date no escorted WFP ships have been targeted. France, Denmark and the Netherlands have provided naval escorts over the last eight months.
Somalia has been beset by instability and insecurity for almost 20 years and is further affected by recurring drought and increasing food prices.