A regional maritime official said Saturday that Somali gunmen have hijacked another Malaysian ship off the coast of the Horn of African nation in the latest attacks on the world's most dangerous waters.
Andrew Mwangura, the east African coordinator of Seafarers Assistance Program (SAP), told Xinhua that the Malaysian vessel was seized on Friday night but could not confirm the name of the vessel and the nationalities of the crew members aboard.
"The Somali gunmen seized another Malaysian cargo ship off the coast but I have not established how many crew members were aboard and their nationalities," Mwangura told Xinhua by telephone.
"The cargo ship was hijacked on Friday night. We still don't know the owners of the ship but we believe it's a Malaysian bulk carrier," he added by telephone from Kenya's coastal city of Mombasa.
The global maritime body says at least 30 ships have been hijacked off the coast of the Horn of Africa nation so far this year.
A record four ships were seized in 48 hours last week and the frequency of piracy attacks has been especially high in the past month.
Since late July, Japanese, Nigerian, and Thai ships have all been hijacked by Somali pirates seeking ransoms.
According to Mwangura, currently Somali gunmen are holding captive MV Stella Maris, MV Thor Star, MT Yengeoa Ocean, MT Bunga Melati Dua, MT Irene, BBC Trinidad and Iranian bulk carrier MV Iran Deyat.
Iran's DEYANAT, a 44,468 dwt bulk carrier laden with 40,000 tons of iron ore en route from China to the Netherlands, was attacked by pirates last week.
Piracy has long been a problem in the Gulf of Aden, where one of the world's busiest shipping lanes, connecting the Indian Ocean and the Red Sea, passes by lawless Somalia, which has been without an effective central government since 1991.
The attackers are usually armed with automatic weapons and rocket-propelled grenades and travel in small, fast speedboats that can be towed more than 100 miles offshore by larger vessels to lie in wait.
Somalia's 3,300-kilometer coastline is considered one of the world's most dangerous stretches of water because of piracy.
Source:Xinhua
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