Iran-bound Brazilian sugar ship hijacked off India
UPDATED: 26 March
(Reuters) - An Iranian bulk carrier of Brazilian sugar was hijacked in the eastern Indian Ocean early on Monday with 23 crew on board, international shipping monitors said.
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MV Eglantine, previously the Iran Gilan, Image via shipspotter.com
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The Eglantine, which according to Reuters shipping data loaded in Rio de Janeiro in late February, was hijacked off India's southwest coast by suspected Somali pirates, NATO's counter-piracy mission said.
Armed pirate gangs are making millions of dollars in ransoms and are able to stay out at sea for long periods using captured merchant vessels as mother ships. The shipping security crisis costs world trade billions of dollars each year.
Attacks as far away from Somalia as Monday's hijacking are rare. Although NATO, EU and Iranian naval forces are trying to protect merchant shipping, the Indian Ocean is too big for them to effectively patrol all of it.
"It is very far east from Somalia," a spokeswoman for the NATO Shipping Centre said.
The U.S. has identified the vessel as being operated by Iranian government shipping companies blacklisted by Washington.
Iran is expected to import 1.6 million tonnes of sugar in 2011-12, according to the International Sugar Organization.
However, Western sanctions have made it difficult for Iran to pay for basic foods through the global banking system, even though foodstuffs are not targeted by the sanctions.
The vessel was carrying over 63,000 tonnes of cargo when it left Brazil, the world's biggest sugar exporter, according to shipping data.
(OCEANUSLive) - The Eglantine, previously named the Bluebell and the Iran Gilan, is owned by Darya Hafiz Shipping and is a 63k DWT Bolivian-flagged bulk carrier.
(AFP) - The vessel, identified as MV Eglantine, had been seized off the north-western Hoarafush island in the Indian Ocean atoll nation of the Maldives, the Maldivian National Defence Force (MNDF) said. It is the first hijacking within Maldivian territory.
"The incident is seven miles inside our Exclusive Economic Zone," MNDF chief spokesman Colonel Abdul Raheem Latheef told AFP. "The ship appears to be drifting and we are sending our vessels to the area."
He said the Maldivian authorities were coordinating their efforts with the naval authorities of neighbouring India.
The MNDF was alerted to the hijacking by the Global Maritime Distress and Safety System, the emergency communications system for global shipping, which maintains an operation in the Maldives, the Maldivian spokesman said.
In November, the Maldives announced it was working with Sri Lanka and India on a strategy to deal with Somali pirates. The Maldives had arrested 37 Somali pirates who were drifting near the archipelago.
Sri Lanka has also arrested an unspecified number of Somali pirates.
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