Somali pirates hijack Jordanian ship carrying aid

Andrew Mwangura of the East Africa Seafarers Assistance Program said the attack occurred early Saturday morning. The pirates seized the ship not far from the Somali capital of Mogadishu and were taking it north, he said.

Jordan's minister of transportation, Ala'a al-Batayneh, said about a dozen crew members from Pakistan, India, Tanzania and Bangladesh were on board the ship, according to Jordan's official Petra news agency.

Contact with the ship, called Victoria, was lost at 8 a.m. Amman time (1 a.m. EDT), when the ship was 35 miles (56 kilometers) off the Somali shore, the agency quoted al-Batayneh as saying.

He said Jordanian authorities were coordinating efforts with the Danish Embassy in the Somali capital to try to release the ship and its crew. Denmark has an agreement with Jordan to protect Jordanian-flagged vessels passing or anchored off Mogadishu.

The Victoria was heading from India to the Somali capital carrying 4,000 tons of sugar in a shipment of humanitarian aid, al-Batayneh said.

It was the second time the Victoria was attacked. Pirates tried to board it outside the Somali port of Merka last year but the ship escaped.

Al-Batayneh ordered Jordan's marine authorities to issue a warning to ships carrying the Jordanian flag to avoid the Somali coast.

Piracy is rampant along the 1,880-mile (3,000-kilometer) Somali coast, the longest in Africa and near key shipping routes connecting the Red Sea with the Indian Ocean. There have been more than a dozen pirate attacks this year alone.

Somali officials have blamed Western companies, accusing them of paying ransoms that can run into hundreds of thousands of dollars and, in so doing, encouraging more hijackings.

Last month, the United States and France introduced a U.N. resolution that would allow countries to chase and arrest pirates off Somalia's coast. The resolution came in response to recent attacks on French, Spanish, Japanese and other vessels.

War-ravaged Somalia is also being hit hard by hyperinflation and food shortages. The arid Horn of Africa nation is awash with weapons, but the transitional government has failed to exert any real control.