Thursday, January 13, 2011
"According to the information we have received, the cargo ship has been boarded by pirates," the deputy head of the association Jan Fritz Hansen told AFP.
He said he was "incapable at the moment of providing further details."
Late Wednesday, Shipcraft shipping company chief Claus Bech said one of the firm's cargo ships, the 2,000-ton Leopard, had been attacked and he had not received any news since.
Bech said the ship is "equipped with barbed wire and steel plates that protect its windows and doors in order to withstand pirate attacks and to allow the crew to regain a secure cabin".
Two Danes, including the captain, and four Filipinos were aboard the vessel, he said.
Somali pirates, targeting one of the world's busiest maritime trade routes, have made tens of millions of dollars in ransom by seizing ships in the Indian Ocean and the Gulf of Aden.
In 2009, Somali hijackers attacked more than 130 merchant ships off Somalia, a rise of more than 200 percent on 2007, according to the International Maritime Bureau's Piracy Reporting Centre in Kuala Lumpur.
Source: Agence France-Presse (AFP)