By Abdi Guled and Abdi Sheikh
Mogadishu - Somali pirates have seized a United Arab Emirates-flagged cargo ship loaded with weapons bound for the anarchic Horn of Africa nation in contravention of a United Nations arms embargo, maritime experts said on Monday.
Also on Monday, the gunmen launched their longest range hijack attempt yet - opening fire on a giant Hong Kong-flagged crude oil tanker 1 000 nautical miles east of Mogadishu.
Andrew Mwangura of the East African Seafarers' Assistance Programme told Reuters he believed the weapons ship was using a fake name. He said it had been hijacked on Sunday and was now held near the northern Somali town of Garacad.
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"She is one of the regular weapons carriers circumventing the UN arms embargo on Somalia," Mwangura said. Maritime sources say the craft is believed to be carrying light arms and ammunition, as well as rockets and rocket-propelled grenades.
"We understand the weapons belong to the Somali government," Farah, a pirate, told Reuters by satellite telephone.
Another gang member, Hassan, said the weapons ship was well known to them: "It has been circling in our ocean for a long time, bringing illegal weapons to massacre Somalis," he said.
Somalia has been torn by 18 years of civil war and hardline Islamist insurgents linked to al Qaeda are fighting to topple President Sheikh Sharif Ahmed's fragile UN-backed government.
Almost 19 000 civilians have died since the start of 2007 and more than 1.5 million have been driven from their homes, triggering one of the world's worst humanitarian disasters.
Somalia's pirates have no overt links to the country's hardline rebels but some southern pirate ports are in insurgent-held areas, and experts say there may be cooperation between some sea gangs and some rebels.
In the latest pirate attack, the European Union naval force EU Navfor said gunmen opened fire on a Hong Kong-flagged, 330m, 160 000-ton crude oil tanker, the BW Lion.
The attempted hijacking took place about 400 nautical miles north-east of the Seychelles and 1 000 nautical miles east of the Somali capital Mogadishu, EU Navfor said.
"This was the longest range of a pirate attack off the Somali coast ever," it said in a statement.
Mwangura said the tanker had caught fire after being hit by automatic bullets and a rocket-propelled grenade, but there were no casualties and the captain had steered his ship to safety.
"There have been 12 pirate events in this area in the last 30 days. There is a high probability of attacks in this area for at least the next 24-48 hours. Weather conditions are expected to remain favourable for piracy... through this period," he said. - Reuters
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