14/10/2005
Second Pirate Attack On UN Food Aid Ship In Somalia

Six armed men stormed a UN chartered ship carrying food aid for Somalia this week and hijacked the vessel which was unloading in the port of Merka, 100 kilometres south-west of Mogadishu, the Somali capital. Carrying 850 tonnes of food for 78,000 of the vulnerable people in Somalia's Lower Juba Valley, the hijackers forced the vessel to put to sea with half the cargo still on board. This is the second time in three months that a vessel chartered by the UN and carrying humanitarian aid has been hijacked.

“We are very relieved that the crew are all unharmed and that the food aid is intact,” UN World Food Programme (WFP) Deputy Country Director Leo van der Velden said

“Fortunately this particular shipment is only slightly delayed, but with two hijackings in three months we will have to consider alternatives to secure the safety of both the people and food involved in our operations,”

Somalia, in the Horn of Africa country, has been without a functioning government since the collapse of President Muhammad Siad Barre’s regime in 1991. WFP aims to provide a total of 1 million people in Somalia with food this year.

The vessel concerned, the MV Miltzow, its crew and cargo were released on Friday, after a representative of the contractor together with the district commissioner boarded the ship to negotiate. The Miltzow was being offloaded when six gunmen stormed the ship and forced it to leave the port. Some 400 tons of the total cargo of 850 tons of WFP food aid remained on board.

In June, the WFP-chartered Semlow, carrying 850 tons of rice for 28,000 tsunami survivors in the Puntland region, was stormed by gunmen off the coast of central Somalia, the first time in WFP history that a ship carrying relief food had been hijacked. It was released to the El Maan Port Authorities on 4 October.

Given the ongoing insecurity off the coast of Somalia, the agency is looking at various alternative routes including overland from Kenya and through Djibouti. Shipping companies are currently demanding armed escorts.