The Associated Press
updated 2:05 p.m. CT, Mon., Nov. 17, 2008

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates - Somali pirates hijacked a Saudi supertanker with a cargo of crude oil hundreds of miles out in the Indian Ocean in a dramatic escalation that showed their expanding reach.

It was the largest vessel seized yet in a surge of pirate attacks, and the farthest out to sea that the well-armed fighters, bolstered by millions in past ransoms, have successfully struck. Maritime experts warned that the daylight attack, reported by the U.S. Navy on Monday, was an alarming sign of the difficulty of patrolling a vast stretch of ocean key for oil and other cargo traffic.

The brand-new MV Sirius Star tanker, with a 25-member crew, was seized at about 10 a.m. Saturday more than 450 nautical miles southeast of Mombasa, Kenya, the U.S. Navy said. The area lies far south of the zone where warships have increased their patrols this year in the Gulf of Aden, one of the busiest channels in the world, leading to and from the Suez Canal, and the scene of most past attacks.

The massive supertanker would seem to present a daunting target for the pirates, who usually operate in small speedboats. At 1,080 feet, it's the length of an aircraft carrier, able to carry about 2 million barrels of oil.

But its crew may have had a false sense of security so far from shore, and pirates have repeatedly demonstrated their skill in taking down big prizes.

Aggressive tactics
Details of Saturday's attack were not known, but in past seizures, pirates have used ropes and ladders to climb the hull — and often on large ships, the crew don't notice them until it's too late. On the Sirius Star, the attackers likely would have had to scale about 33 feet from the water to the deck.

It was not clear if the Sirius Star had any armed security on board. In past attacks, alert crews have been able to fend off pirates trying to climb the sides, using water hoses to knock them away. But the pirates are able to strike back: In April, they punched a hole in the side of a Japanese oil tanker with a rocket-propelled grenade in an unsuccessful attempt to capture it.
Pirates have been spreading their attacks in recent weeks southward into a vast area of the Indian Ocean that would be extremely difficult and costly to patrol, maritime security experts said.

"It had been slightly more easy to get it under control in the Gulf of Aden because it is a comparatively smaller area of water which has to be patrolled, but this is huge," said Cyrus Mody, manager of the International Maritime Bureau.

The pirates were taking the captured tanker and crew to an anchorage off the Somali port of Eyl, Lt. Nathan Christensen, a spokesman for the U.S. Navy's 5th Fleet, said. The port on Somalia's northeastern coast has become a pirate haven and a number of ships are already being held there as pirates negotiate ransoms.

Christensen said the Sirius Star was carrying crude, but could not say how much. Fully loaded, the ship's cargo could be worth about $100 million. But the pirates would have no way of selling crude and no way to refine it in Somalia. Instead, they were likely to demand a ransom, as they have in the past.

"It's the largest ship we've seen hijacked and one attacked farthest out on the sea," Christensen said. The capturing of the oil tanker represents a "fundamental shift in the ability of pirates to be able to attack merchant vessels."

Uptick in hijackings
The Sirius Star, which was commissioned in March and is owned by Saudi oil company Aramco, is classed as a Very Large Crude Carrier, the second-largest classification. It was sailing under a Liberian flag and its 25-member crew includes citizens of Croatia, Britain, the Philippines, Poland and Saudi Arabia. A British Foreign Office spokesman said there were at least two British nationals on board.

An operator with Aramco said there was no one available at the company to comment after business hours. Calls went unanswered at Vela international, the Dubai-based marine company that operated the ship for Aramco. Christensen said he had no details on the ship's port of origin and destination.

Pirate attacks off Somalia have surged more than 75 percent this year, hitting freighters, tankers, yachts and fishing vessels. The pirates raised international alarm bells in September when they seized a Ukrainian freighter, the Faina, carrying a cargo of battle tanks and other weapons. The Faina and its 20-member crew are still being held off Somalia, watched by warships to prevent the removal of its cargo.

With most attacks ending with million-dollar payouts, piracy is considered the biggest economy in Somalia, a country that has had no stable government for decades. A report last month by a London-based think tank said pirates have raked in up to $30 million in ransoms this year alone.

'Very strong and very rich'
The pirates are trained fighters, often dressed in military fatigues, using speedboats equipped with satellite phones and GPS equipment. They are typically armed with automatic weapons, anti-tank rockets launchers and various types of grenades. Far out to sea, their speedboats operate from larger motherships.

"Pirates are becoming very strong and very rich, and they are expanding into other parts of the (Indian) ocean beyond the Gulf of Aden," said Nour Mohammed Saeed, a former fisheries minister in the Puntland region of northern Somalia. "They are getting a lot of money and they know that they can make more."

The seizure of the Faina and its cargo of weapons prompted a reinforcement of warships patrolling the waters off Somalia. Along with a Russian frigate and Indian vessels, a NATO flotilla of seven ships is in the Gulf of Aden to help the U.S. 5th Fleet in anti-piracy patrols and to escort cargo vessels. The 5th Fleet said it has repelled about two dozen pirate attacks since Aug. 22 in the gulf.

Another multinational fleet currently led by the Dutch has carved out a protected lane through the Gulf of Aden, through which 20,000 tankers, freighters and merchant vessels transit every year, entering and exiting the Suez Canal.

But other ships — including ones too big for the canal like the Sirius Star — pass off East Africa to circle the continent by the Cape of Good Hope.

The expansion of attacks signals they too could be vulnerable.

"There will never be enough warships," said Graeme Gibbon Brooks, the managing director of British company Dryad Maritime Intelligence Service Ltd. "The whole area is 2.5 million square miles ... the coalition have to act preemptively and be one step ahead of the pirates."

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