Pat Dollard | Young Americans

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MOGADISHU, Somalia - Security forces in northern Somalia stormed a hijacked ship carrying food Tuesday, rescuing hostages and arresting seven pirates, officials said. The seizure was the latest in a spate of pirate attacks off the increasingly lawless Somali coast.
The Dubai-flagged ship, called the al-Khaleej, originated from the United Arab Emirates and was seized Monday, said Abdullahi Said Samatar, security affairs minister in Somalia’s semiautonomous Puntland region.

It was not immediately clear how many people were on board. Puntland officials announced it had been seized only after the boat was rescued.

“Our forces rescued a small commercial boat hijacked on Monday off the coast of Bossaso town,” Samatar told The Associated Press. “Three were injured in the operation and seven others will be brought to justice.”

Piracy is rampant along Somalia’s 1,880-mile coast, which is the longest in Africa and near key shipping routes connecting the Red Sea with the Indian Ocean.

Wracked by more than a decade of violence and anarchy, Somalia does not have a navy, and a transitional government formed in 2004 with U.N. help has struggled to assert control. The U.S. Navy has led international patrols to try to combat piracy in the region.

The United States and France are drafting a U.N. resolution that would allow countries to chase and arrest pirates off Somalia’s coast, responding to a spate of attacks including this week’s hijacking of a Spanish tuna boat.

France’s U.N. Ambassador Jean-Maurice Ripert said the resolution would authorize foreign governments to pursue pirate vessels into territorial waters, make arrests, and prosecute suspects.

“We want to do it fast, but it could take one or two weeks because it has to be by consensus—it’s not confrontational,” he told the AP.

The push by key U.N. Security Council nations to tackle the issue follows an alarming increase in piracy by well-armed bandits, prompting international demands for better protection of the world’s shipping lanes.

Pirates using rocket-propelled grenades hijacked a Spanish tuna boat on Sunday off the coast of Somalia. A day later, pirates fired on a Japanese oil tanker, unleashing hundreds of gallons of fuel into the Gulf of Aden, the body of water between Somalia’s north and the southern coast of the Mideast country of Yemen.

Earlier this month, Somali pirates hijacked a French luxury yacht in the Gulf of Aden. A French military helicopter later captured six pirates, who are facing preliminary charges in France, after the yacht’s crew was released on April 11.

The father of one of the crew members on board the 250-foot Spanish tuna boat, called the Playa de Bakio, told a radio station Monday that the vessel had dropped anchor off the Somali coast.

The 26 crew members were being treated well, though the hijackers have stolen some personal items from their cabins, Jose Mari Arana, the father of a crew member, told Radio Euskadi Monday after speaking to his son by cell phone. The hijackers also appear to have military training, he said.

“They say a commander is going to come to negotiate. From the way they speak, they do not seem to be classical-style pirates,” Arana said.

In a report by the International Maritime Bureau, piracy is on the rise, with seafarers suffering 49 attacks between January and March—up 20 percent from the period last year.

Nigeria ranked as the No. 1 trouble spot. India and the Gulf of Aden tied for second, with each reporting five incidents. Nearly two dozen piracy incidents were recorded off of Somalia since January 2007, according to Andrew Mwangura of the Kenya-based Seafarers Assistance Program.

“The issue of piracy is an important issue, and within that framework we’re focusing in particular on the threat of piracy off the coast of Somalia,” U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad told the AP.

Khalilzad said discussion on the draft U.N. resolution is ongoing. “We’re talking to the French and others to put forward something on the piracy, specifically off the coast of Somalia, but the importance of the overall issue will be recognized,” Khalilzad said.

Ripert said the legal details will take time to work out because pursuing pirate vessels could mean going into the territorial waters of a country “so you have to pre-negotiate the consent of the state.”

“We want also to address other zones in the world, but then the situations and the realities are different,” he said, so the initial resolution will probably just focus on Somalia.

(AP)