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Pirates hijack tourist boat in Gulf of Aden

PARIS — Pirates have seized a French tourist boat that was traveling in waters off Somalia despite repeated warnings to avoid the area, officials said Tuesday.

French authorities were monitoring the Tanit, which was taken Saturday with five French tourists on board, Foreign Ministry spokesman Eric Chevallier said. Somali authorities and local clans were negotiating for the hostages’ release, according to non-governmental monitoring group Ecoterra International.

It was one of several recent sea hijackings by Somali pirates, who appear to be expanding their operations out from the Gulf of Aden into the Indian Ocean.

The Tanit’s crew and “the passengers were informed several times of the risks” of travel in the area, Chevallier told a news conference in Paris.

France has a naval ship in the Gulf of Aden as part of a European anti-piracy force, and Chevallier said the French government may offer to help train Somali police to cope with the pirates. He gave no details, saying the negotiations were still ongoing.

Ecoterra International, which monitors sea hijackings, said the Tanit was seized by about 14 pirates about 390 miles from the coastal Somali town of Bandar-Beyla.

It said the pirates used a Yemeni fishing vessel hijacked earlier to reach the French boat, then abandoned the Yemeni boat and took the French one toward Bandar-Beyla.

Somali authorities and local clans were negotiating for the French hostages’ release, Ecoterra said on its Web site.

French forces have intervened to free other French boats captured in the region.

Taiwan’s military said, however, it had no plan to send a warship to the Indian Ocean, after the Taiwanese ship Win Far 161 was seized on Monday near an island in the Seychelles, between the southeastern coast of Africa and Madagascar.

Taiwanese politicians demanded swift government action to rescue the boat’s crew.

But Taiwanese Maj. Gen. Lee Yueh-hsiang said the distance, as well as the country’s diplomatic situation, meant no warships were being sent to the troubled area.

Also in recent days, another small Yemeni boat was hijacked Sunday in the Indian Ocean, and a 35,000-ton British-owned bulk carrier, the Malaspina Castle, was hijacked early Monday in the Gulf of Aden.

Analysts say the pirates have moved many of their operations out of the Gulf of Aden, which is now heavily patrolled by international naval warships. Instead, they are targeting ships coming out of the Mozambique Channel, an area of the Indian Ocean further south between the southeastern Africa coast and Madagascar.