Nairobi/Mogadishu - Somali pirates are demanding a ransom of 35 million dollars for a Ukrainian ship carrying 33 tanks destined for Kenya, a spokesman for the pirates said Saturday. Januna Ali Jama said that the equipment on board included "weapons of all kinds" and was very valuable to its owners, Mogadishu-based Radio Garowe reported.
Piracy is rife in the Gulf of Aden - a strategic shipping route off Somalia - with over a dozen ships currently in the hands of armed groups, the latest victim being a Greek vessel seized Saturday.
The ransom being asked for the Belize-flagged Ukrainian ship, named Faina, far exceeds previous demands, which usually hover around the 1-2 million-dollar mark.
The ship was seized late Thursday off Somalia as it headed for the Kenyan port of Mombasa.
Ukraine's Defence Minister Yury Yekhanurov told reporters in Kiev the vessel was transporting 33 medium T-72 tanks "and a substantial amount of military materials."
Earlier reports had suggested the shipment was bound for South Sudan, but Kenyan government spokesman Alfred Mutua said Friday that the equipment was for use by the Kenyan military.
Armoured personnel carriers and munitions are also believed to be part of the delivery.
A total of 21 crewmembers were onboard - 17 Ukrainians, three Russians and one Latvian - when the ship was chased down and boarded by armed men in three launches.
Somalia has been plagued by chaos and clan-based civil war since dictator Mohamed Siad Barre was toppled in 1991.
Piracy has flourished in the last two years as Islamist insurgents push hard to regain power from the transitional federal government, which came to power with Ethiopian assistance in late 2006.
The United Nations Security Council in June approved incursions into Somali waters to combat the pirates and the US Naval Central Command recently set up a security patrol in the area.
However, the measures appear to have had little effect so far, with estimates putting the number of pirates at well over 1,000, compared to only a few hundred in 2005.
Somali authorities and maritime officials say that paying ransoms has only encouraged more pirates to take to the seas.
Januna warned that neither the US, nor France - which has troops bases in nearby Djibouti and has intervened in the past when its own citizens have been involved in kidnappings - should attempt military action.
"We warn the French and the Americans...anything that happens is their responsibility," he said.
Russia on Friday said it was sending a warship to the region and Canada has also extended the tour of duty of a warship it provided to protect humanitarian deliveries to Somalia.
Observers have expressed concern that some of the pirates have links to the ongoing bloody insurgency in the Horn of Africa nation and are helping fund it through piracy.
Almost daily battles have blighted the Horn of Africa nation since Ethiopian troops invaded in 2006 to kick out the Islamist regime and put the transitional federal government back in power.
The Mogadishu-based Elman Peace and Human Rights Organization says almost 9,500 civilians have died in the insurgency since early 2007.
The government and moderate opposition figures have signed a peace agreement, with the technical details of the ceasefire still being hammered out, but main insurgent group al-Shabaab has rejected the deal.
In Athens earlier Saturday, it was disclosed that a tanker of a Greek shipping company had been captured off the coast of Somalia by pirates.
According to the Greek coastguard, 19 Romanian sailors were aboard the tanker Genious which was sailing under a Liberian flag.
The attack was reported to the shipping company by the ship's captain by radio shortly before the pirates boarded the vessel. The pirates fired a number shots into the air to bring the ship to a halt.
