Tankers ordered to avoid Suez Canal

MOGADISHU, Somalia — A major Norwegian shipping group Tuesday ordered its more than 90 tankers to sail around Africa rather than use the Suez Canal after Somali pirates seized a Saudi supertanker carrying $100 million in crude oil.

The hijacked tanker was anchored off the coast of Somalia on Tuesday, and the ship's owner said it was working to free the ship and its 25-member crew. Two more vessels — a Thai fishing boat and Hong Kong-flagged cargo ship — were seized Tuesday.

"We will no longer expose our crew to the risk of being hijacked and held for ransom by pirates in the Gulf of Aden," said Terje Storeng, the resident and chief executive of Odfjell in Norway. "Unless we are explicitly committed by existing contracts to sail through this area, as from today we will reroute our ships around Cape of Good Hope."

The Gulf of Aden, off Somalia, connects to the Red Sea, which, in turn, is linked to the Mediterranean by the Suez Canal. The route is thousands of miles and many days shorter than going around the southern tip of Africa.

Piracy in the Arabian Sea and Gulf of Aden has become a menacing scourge, threatening shipping lanes and driving up insurance costs.

Swarming the targets with speedboats, the machine-gun-toting pirates take control of ships and then hold the vessels, crew and cargo for ransom.

The latest vessels seized Tuesday were a bulk cargo carrier, the Delight, which was hauling 36,000 metric tons of wheat, and its 25-person crew, and a Thai fishing boat with 16 crew members.

The owner of the hijacked supertanker, Vela International, a subsidiary of the Saudi Arabia-based oil giant Saudi Aramco, said the company was awaiting further contact from the pirates who seized the vessel 480 miles off the coast of Somalia. Earlier reports had said the Sirius Star was hijacked off Kenya.

The company did not say specifically that it had begun negotiations with the hijackers. The supertanker, about the same length as a U.S. Nimitz-class aircraft carrier, is the largest ship and the first oil tanker known to have been hijacked.

"Our first and foremost priority is ensuring the safety of the crew," said Vela President and CEO Salah B. Ka'aki.

The Sirius Star remained anchored Tuesday close to Harardhere, the main pirates' den on the Somali coast, with a full load of 2 million barrels of oil and its crew, who are citizens of Britain, Poland, Croatia, the Philippines and Saudi Arabia.

NATO has three warships in the Gulf of Aden and the U.S. Navy's 5th Fleet has ships in the region. But the supertanker was seized far from where they patrol.

"It shows that the pirates now have the capability and capacity to sustain themselves in deep sea until the vessel actually comes by," said Cyrus Mody, the manager of the International Maritime Bureau, which monitors global piracy.

If the episode follows the pattern of previous hijackings, ransom negotiations between the pirates and the owners of the ship will begin soon.

Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Saud al-Faisal called the hijacking "an outrageous act."

Early today, the Indian navy said its warship dedicated to fighting pirates has successfully fought off an attempted pirate attack in the Gulf of Aden.

A news release said a suspected pirate ship with two speed boats in tow approached the INS Tabar late Tuesday, threatened to blow up the warship, and opened fire. Indian naval officers saw well-armed men roaming the ship's deck.

The INS Tabar returned fire, sparking explosions and a fire on the suspected pirate ship. The Indian ship chased one of the speed boats, which was later found abandoned, while the other escaped.

Compiled from The Associated Press, The New York Times and

the Los Angeles Times