The 20 crew members aboard a hijacked Ukrainian ship laden with tanks are living in fear of the pirates who seized the vessel two weeks ago off the coast of Somalia, the United States Navy said on Thursday.
Lieutenant Nathan Christensen, a spokesperson from the US 5th Fleet in Bahrain, said the navy is in regular contact with the crew of the MV Faina.
Six US warships have surrounded the Faina, which was hijacked late last month with 21 crew members on board. Officials in Moscow say the ship’s Russian captain died of a heart condition soon after the hijacking.
Christensen said the navy has no information on when the stand-off will end, but added the US will make sure the pirates do not take the heavy weapons ashore and will monitor the welfare of the hijacked crew until then.
”They want it to end peaceful and quickly,” Christensen said on Thursday.
A Russian frigate also is headed toward the stand-off. The US Navy warships have been tracking the ship amid fears its weapons — including 33 battle tanks — might fall into the hands of al-Qaeda-linked insurgents in Somalia.
The pirates asked for $20-million in ransom, then apparently lowered it to about $8-million. The pirate spokesperson, usually available to the media by satellite phone, has not answered for days.
The Ukrainian government has said the ship’s owners and operators are negotiating through intermediaries.
The Faina‘s hijacking, the most high-profile hijacking off Somalia this year, illustrates the ability of pirates from a failed state to menace a key international shipping lane despite the deployment of warships by global powers. More than two dozen ships have been hijacked off Somalia’s coast this year.
Late on Wednesday, pirates in Somalia released 15 Filipino sailors and four other crew members of the MT Irene, a chemical tanker hijacked nearly two months ago, but they were still holding 67 other Filipino sailors.
”All crew members are safe and sound despite the ordeal they have undergone,” a spokesperson for the Philippines Foreign Affairs Department, Claro Cristobal, said.
Four ships with 67 Filipino sailors remained in the hands of Somali pirates, he said.
Somalia’s government has given foreign powers the freedom to use force against the pirates, raising the stakes significantly. Russia, whose warship is not expected for several days, has used commando tactics to end several hostage situations on its own soil, but hundreds of hostages have died in those efforts.
Somalia, a nation of about eight million people, has not had a functioning government since warlords overthrew a dictator in 1991 and then turned on each other. A quarter of Somali children die before age five and nearly every public institution has collapsed. Fighting is a daily occurrence.
Islamic militants with ties to al-Qaeda have been battling the government and its Ethiopian allies since the Islamists were driven from the capital in December 2006. Since then, the Islamists have launched an insurgency that has killed thousands of civilians. — Sapa-AP