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Somali pirates attack Turkish commercial ship in Gulf of Aden
As of Wednesday afternoon, the ship was continuing on its course with the pirates aboard, with the Turkish navy frigate TCG Gediz following.
NATO spokesman Cmdr. Chris Davies said the Gediz had seen at least four pirates on the deck of the ship, but others may have been out of sight, while the Anatolia news agency reported, citing anonymous sources in an article posted from Ankara, that there were five armed pirates on the ship. There had been no contact with the ship as of Wednesday afternoon, and no ransom request had been conveyed to any party by the pirates, Anatolia also reported.
The ship was taken in the internationally recommended transit corridor, “which is not good news because that's where ships are meant to be safer,” Davies noted. Warships patrol the corridor, where ships are encouraged to travel in groups to help prevent attack.
Attacks in the corridor are rare, and a Turkish warship on escort duty was diverted to the scene shortly after the Horizon I sounded the alarm. But most navies will not intervene after pirates are onboard a ship for fear of harming the hostages.
Several pirate attacks still occur off Somalia's lawless coast each week despite poor weather and the presence of international warships in the Gulf of Aden. At least 11 ships are currently being held.
Somalia has not had a functioning government since 1991, and the clan militias and insurgent groups who control the coastline have little incentive to rein in pirates, who make multi-million-dollar ransoms.
As of the end of 2008 some 15 ships, three of them Turkish, had been hijacked, along with more than 300 crew members, 37 of whom were Turkish.
An Antigua-flagged Turkish-owned cargo ship, the MV Bosphorus Prodigy, and its crew of 11 were freed by Somali pirates in early February after being held for seven weeks. The M/V Yasa Neslihan, owned by the Yasa Maritime Company and hijacked on Oct. 29 with 20 crew members aboard, was released in early January. The Karagöl, owned by the YDC Maritime Company and hijacked on Nov. 12 off the coast of Yemen with 14 crew members aboard, was released within days after the release of the M/V Yasa Neslihan.
While owners confirmed at the time that ransom was paid for the release of the M/V Yasa Neslihan, no such statement was made concerning the release of the Karagöl. No statement from the İsko Marine Shipping Company of Turkey, which operated the MV Bosphorus Prodigy, was delivered, either.
The TCG Gediz last month set sail from Turkey to Somalia as part of a UN-led force to prevent pirates from hijacking foreign ships off the Somali coast and was the second Turkish ship sent to the region. The Gediz is in the region for a one-year mission and has been part of the Combined Task Force (CTF) 151, a multinational counter-piracy task force established in January with a specific mandate to counter piracy operations in and around the Gulf of Aden, the Arabian Sea, the Indian Ocean and the Red Sea. Another Turkish frigate, the Giresun, was sent to the region in February on a four-month mission. As of May, Turkey has taken over the command of CTF-151, which is one of four international naval forces operating in the region.
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