Late last month, a cargo ship with a load of timber and a Russian crew of 15 radioed home a location off the coast of Portugal. It hasscheduled to make port in Algeria on August 4 to deliver its cargo.
But all attempts to raise the ship on radio or locate its emergency beacon have failed. “Unfortunately, the location of the ship is still not known,” Viktor Matveyev, the director of Solchart, a company in Finland that operates the ship, said by telephone on Wednesday. “There have been no communications and no signals from the instrument that transmitted the ship’s location.” And on Thursday, Reuters quoted him as saying, “My view is that it is most likely that the vessel has been hijacked.”
Though details are still murky, word of the missing ship has conjured images of the brazen pirate raids frequent in the Gulf of Aden off Somalia’s coast.
Before the ship disappeared, the captain radioed that unidentified men claiming to be police officers had raided the ship, but he said they had released it. A news anchor for Russia’s NTV television called the Arctic Sea the “first ship captured by pirates in Europe.”
Amid the fears of a possible hijacking, Russia’s president, Dmitri Medvedev, ordered his defense minister to personally take charge of the search, the Kremlin website said on Wednesday. Warships from the Russian Black Sea Fleet have already joined the search.
But all attempts to raise the ship on radio or locate its emergency beacon have failed. “Unfortunately, the location of the ship is still not known,” Viktor Matveyev, the director of Solchart, a company in Finland that operates the ship, said by telephone on Wednesday. “There have been no communications and no signals from the instrument that transmitted the ship’s location.” And on Thursday, Reuters quoted him as saying, “My view is that it is most likely that the vessel has been hijacked.”
Though details are still murky, word of the missing ship has conjured images of the brazen pirate raids frequent in the Gulf of Aden off Somalia’s coast.
Before the ship disappeared, the captain radioed that unidentified men claiming to be police officers had raided the ship, but he said they had released it. A news anchor for Russia’s NTV television called the Arctic Sea the “first ship captured by pirates in Europe.”
Amid the fears of a possible hijacking, Russia’s president, Dmitri Medvedev, ordered his defense minister to personally take charge of the search, the Kremlin website said on Wednesday. Warships from the Russian Black Sea Fleet have already joined the search.
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