Somali Pirates Grab Another in Indian Ocean

UPDATE: Pirates have been cleared from ship, as reported here and by NATO Shipping Center:

October 25 2010
WARNING Somali Basin
Latitude: 02°58 N Longitude: 059°55 E
Alert number 441/ 2010. ---ALERT UPDATE---
Reference previous Alert number 439/ 2010.
At 0542 UTC a merchant vessel was reported Hijacked by pirates in position 03°29N 059°35E. 2 skiff were used with 4 POB. Weapons were used.
THE Pirate Action Group PIRATED THE MV AND THEN LEFT HER.
Last position 02°58N 059°55E.
***This vessel managed to evade hijack***
The Pirate action group is still in the area.

More here:

German military and international anti-piracy forces attacked a cargo ship being held by Somali pirates off eastern Africa and freed it Monday, but the hijackers got away, the German shipping company said.
***The German military freed the ship in cooperation with the anti-pirate mission Operation Atalanta, the shipping company said, adding that the ship was now on its way to South Africa as planned.

Nils Stolberg, the director of the Beluga-Reederei, said in a statement that one of the main reasons the military was able to free the ship so quickly was that the crew had trained for an emergency situation like this many times over the years.

"They sent out an emergency call, barricaded themselves in a special security room, shut off the fuel supply and the bridge and informed the military," Stolberg said. "This way the pirates could not bring the ship under their control or take the sailors at ransom."

In addition to the tanker grabbed off Kenya (see here), there are reports of another ship capture here:

Bremen-based Beluga shipping company meanwhile said one of its chartered cargo ships had been captured by pirates in the Indian Ocean.

The South Africa-bound ship was carrying heavy packages from the United Arab Emirates to Richards Bay, a company statement issued in the northern German port said, but did not give details about the number of staff or their nationality.

"We received a distress call this Sunday at 7:08 a.m. (0508 GMT) from our cargo Beluga Fortune," said the statement. "We can now confirm that this was an attack and that our ship was seized by Somali pirates."

The German foreign ministry could not immediately confirm the capture.

Including this weekend's seizures, pirates currently are holding 20 vessels with at least 428 hostages, the EU statement said.

Photo by Vladimir Knyaz from Shipspotting.com and used iaw the terms of that site.