ISTANBUL — Pirates holding a Turkish bulk carrier off Somalia have shot and wounded one of the sailors, a Turkish newspaper quoted relatives as saying Friday.
The mother of one of the 23 crew said her son told them about the incident in a brief telephone conversation earlier this week.
“My son was weeping and asking us to save them… He said that they had run out of food… and that one (sailor) had been shot and wounded,” the Radikal daily quoted Gulperi Sari as saying.
“I’m worried about my son’s life… The government must resolve this issue,” she said.
The Horizon 1 was seized on July 8 while sailing from Saudi Arabia to Jordan with 33,000 cubic metres of sulphide.
Its Istanbul-based owner has said it is negotiating a ransom to secure the release of the ship and the 23 sailors, among them a woman, declining to reveal the sum being demanded by the pirates.
The vessel was anchored at the port of Eyl in northern Somalia’s breakaway Puntland region.
A multi-national naval force has been deployed to the lawless waters off Somalia over the past year to curb pirate attacks threatening one of the world’s busiest maritime trade routes.
More than 130 merchant ships were attacked last year, a rise of more than 200 percent on 2007, according to the Kuala Lumpur-based International Maritime Bureau’s Piracy Reporting Centre.
Three Turkish vessels were hijacked in 2008, with the last of them being released in February.
Source: AFP
