CAIRO — South Korea sent a warship to the Indian Ocean on Monday to pursue Somali pirates who hijacked a U.S.-bound oil tanker in another brazen assault in shipping lanes hundreds of miles off the Horn of Africa.
South Korean officials said the hijacked ship, the Samho Dream, is a 300,000-ton tanker, but they gave no indication how much oil was on board when pirates seized the vessel Sunday about 950 miles off the Somali coast. The crew of five Koreans and 19 Filipinos was sailing from Iraq to Louisiana.
“The government has dispatched our Cheong- hae naval unit to the waters of the Indian Ocean, where the ship hijacked by Somali pirates is assumed to be,” the Foreign Ministry said in a statement, referring to a destroyer that is part of the nation’s anti-piracy fleet.
The ship’s owner, Samho Shipping, said in a news conference Monday that officials lost contact with the crew after receiving a distress call late Sunday afternoon. The ship “did not have any guards on board because we thought the area was not a region of pirate activities,” said Chun Bok-Woo, an official from Samho.
If the Samho Dream was carrying its capacity of oil, the value would be about $160 million. Valero Energy Corp. in San Antonio owns the cargo.
On Thursday, a U.S. warship battled bandits in the Indian Ocean, sinking a pirate boat and capturing five gunmen.
