Foreign navies prepare raid; ship-owning firm opposes move

Somali police and international navies were preparing to raid Bangladeshi-flagged commercial ship MV Abdullah that was hijacked by pirates last week, Reuters reported yesterday citing comments of Somali police.

The ship, with 23 crew members on board, was hijacked off the coast of Somalia last week, the latest of more than 20 attacks since November by Somali pirates who had been dormant for nearly a decade.

On Saturday, the Indian navy rescued another cargo vessel, the Maltese-flagged MV Ruen, which had been seized in December, freeing its 17 crew members and arresting 35 pirates.

The police force from the semi-autonomous region of Somalia's Puntland, a base for many pirate gangs, said it was on high alert and prepared to participate in an operation against the pirates holding the Abdullah, reports Reuters.

"Puntland police forces are ready after they got reports that international navies are planning an attack," the police said in a statement.

India's navy, which has disrupted several other attempted hijackings, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

On Sunday, the Puntland police said they had seized a vehicle that was transporting narcotics to be supplied to the pirates on board Abdullah.

Meanwhile, a senior official of KSRM, the parent organisation of SR Shipping that owns MV Abdullah, expressed strong opposition against any such forceful intervention.

"The company does not support military action that might endanger the lives of our crew," he told The Daily Star yesterday.

He claimed that the Bangladesh government has strongly requested respective navies not to go for any forceful intervention.

We want to resolve the crisis through negotiation, he added.

On March 12, the pirates attacked MV Abdullah around 1:30pm (Bangladesh time), when it was around 500 nautical miles off the Somali coast, sailing from Maputo in Mozambique to Al Hamriyah in the UAE with 58,000 tonnes of coal.

After reaching near the Somali coast on March 14, the pirates changed the ship's location twice and now anchored the ship around 4 nautical miles off Somalia's Gadabjiran coast, sources said.

However, the pirates were yet to contact the ship's owning firm or any third party for ransom as of yesterday.

Shipping and security experts have said it is not unusual as the pirates may take time to fix the ransom amount and assess the situation.

Two reliable sources told The Daily Star that soon after the hijacking, the ship's UK-based insurer P&I (protection and indemnity) Club engaged a global crisis management firm called Crisis 24 to analyse the situation and chalk out the necessary plans.

On March 16, a senior official of KSRM said pirates made first contact after over two weeks during the hijack of the firm's other ship MV Jahan Moni in 2010.

In December 2010, KSRM's MV Jahan Moni was hijacked by pirates in the Arabian Sea. Twenty-five crew members and the wife of the chief officer were rescued nearly 100 days after they were held hostage.

At the peak of their attacks in 2011, Somali pirates cost the global economy an estimated $7 billion, including hundreds of millions of dollars in ransom payments.