Pirates demand $15mn for Maltese ship

By Press TV

Somali pirates have demanded $15 million to free a Malta-flagged cargo ship hijacked in the Gulf of Aden with a crew of 15 Georgians and three Turks onboard.

The owner of the MV Olib G initially offered a ransom of $75,000, but later raised it to $150,000. However, the sea pirates want no less than $15 million, a Press TV correspondent reported on Saturday.

The cargo ship, carrying ballast and en route from Alexandria to India, was seized in the pirate-infested Gulf of Aden on September 8.

Rampant piracy off the Indian Ocean coast of Somalia has made these waters among the most dangerous in pirate activity.

The Gulf of Aden, which links the Indian Ocean with the Suez Canal and the Mediterranean Sea, is the quickest route for more than 20,000 vessels traveling annually between Asia, Europe and the Americas.

However, attacks by heavily armed Somali pirates on speedboats have prompted some of the world's largest shipping firms to switch routes from the Suez Canal and reroute cargo vessels around southern Africa, leading to climbing shipping costs.

Somalia has been in strife for the past three decades. Strategically located in the Horn of Africa, it has been embroiled in a bitter civil war for years. The country does not have a functional government and the authority of the so-called Transitional Federal Government is limited mostly to the area around the capital city, Mogadishu.

 

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