Cruise liner outruns shooting pirates

PIRATES chased and shot at a US cruise liner with more than 1,000 people on board but failed to hijack the vessel as it sailed along a corridor patrolled by international warships, a maritime official has said.

The liner, carrying 656 international passengers and 399 crew members, was sailing through the Gulf of Aden on Sunday when it encountered six bandits in two speedboats, said Noel Choong who heads the International Maritime Bureau’s piracy reporting centre in Malaysia.

The pirates fired at the passenger liner but the larger boat was faster than the pirates’ vessels, Choong said.

“It is very fortunate that the liner managed to escape,” he said, urging all ships to remain vigilant in the area.

Ship owner Oceania Cruises identified the vessel as the MS Nautica. In a statement on its website, the company said pirates fired eight rifle shots at the liner, but that the ship’s captain increased speed and managed to outrun the skiffs.

All passengers and crew are safe and there was no damage to the vessel, it said.

The Nautica was on a 32-day cruise heading from Egypt to Oman when it was attacked.

Meanwhile, Somalia’s insurgent Islamist leader Sheikh Hassan Dahir Aweys has called for pirates to immediately release a giant Saudi oil tanker and other vessels being held in Somali waters.

“We are calling for the immediate release of all international vessels under the command of Somali pirates, who are undermining international peace and trade,” Aweys said from the Etitrean capital Asmara.

Aweys said the pirates, negotiating multi-million dollar ransoms for the Saudi tanker Sirius Star and a Ukraine arms ship the Faina as well as a host of other foreign vessels and their crews, “are dealing with the world as if they were legitimate agencies, by talking about ransom money”.

“We are the only force to deal with such criminals,” he added.