U.S. warship heads toward coastal Somalia after relief ship hijacked

A United States warship is heading towards the coastal Somalia where pirates hijacked a United Nations-charted cargo ship on Sunday.

The UN World Food Program (WFP) officials said on Monday the hijacked ship, MV Rozen, is at anchor after delivering food aid in northeastern Somalia, somewhere near Bargal, north of Hafun in the state of Puntland.

They said the U.S. warship was still in international waters, but was heading towards the port of Bargal in the Puntland area, where the MV Rozen has docked.

The WFP said in a statement issued in Nairobi that it was currently in close contact with Somalia's transitional government, the Puntland authorities, and with the vessel's agents, "to obtain the most accurate information and to ensure the earliest release of the vessel and crew."

"The WFP is highly concerned about the safety of crew members and the vessel. Such acts of piracy might undermine the delivery of relief food to vulnerable people in Somalia and could further worsen the prevailing precarious humanitarian situation," said Peter Goossens, WFP country director for Somalia.

The ship, chartered by the WFP from Mombasa-based Motaku Shipping Agency, was hijacked after unloading 1,800 tons of food aid in Berbera and in Bossaso and was sailing empty back to Mombasa.

On board the vessel are 12 crew members, six Sri Lankans, including the captain, and six Kenyans.

Piracy was rampant in Somalia, but stopped during recent Islamist rule and the latest hijacking was the first reported since the interim government and its Ethiopian allies routed Islamists from Mogadishu last month.

Early last year, MV Rozen escaped an attempted hijack in southern Somali waters. Her sister vessel, the MV Semlow, was hijacked with WFP relief food on board for more than 100 days in Somali waters in June 2005.

The crew was released unharmed. Another vessel with WFP food aid, the MV Miltzow, was also hijacked for 33 hours in October 2005 while it was in the process of unloading food in the port of Merka.

In 2005, after the hijacks, the WFP temporarily had to suspend deliveries of food aid by sea for some weeks, but since then sea deliveries have been uninterrupted, even during the worst days of the conflict between the transitional federal government and the Union of Islamic Courts at the end of last year.

The WFP in 2006 delivered some 78,000 tons of relief food to 1. 4 million people affected by drought and floods in southern Somalia.

Source: Xinhua