CREWMEN fired high pressure water jets yesterday to fight off armed Somali pirates trying to board a Greek oil tanker in the dangerous Gulf of Aden, officials said. It was the fourth pirate attack of the new year.
Armed with guns and rocket-propelled grenades, pirates in three speedboats twice tried to board the Kriti Episkopi, but were driven away when the crew turned the fire hoses on them and aircraft scrambled from a nearby European Union naval flotilla
to help.
The attack came a day after Somali pirates seized an Egyptian cargo ship and its 28 crew in the waterway, one of the world's most important sea routes. Also on Thursday, a Malaysian military helicopter saved an Indian tanker from being hijacked and a French warship thwarted an attack on a Panamanian cargo ship and captured several pirates.
The 29 crew members of the Kriti Episkopi were unhurt and the tanker, carrying oil from the Persian Gulf to Greece, was not damaged in the attack.
More than a dozen warships are now patrolling between the shores of Yemen and Somalia to protect commercial vessels in the key waterway, which links the Mediterranean to the Indian Ocean. Countries as diverse as Britain, India, Iran, the United States, China, France and Germany have naval forces in the waters.
A French warship on Thursday intercepted two speedboats with eight Somali pirates as they were preparing to board the Panamanian ship, according to the office of the French president, Nicolas Sarkozy. The crew seized weapons and munitions and plan to hand the pirates over to Somali authorities.
Pirates attacked 111 ships around the Gulf of Aden in 2008, hijacking 42 and earning tens of millions of dollars in ransom.
