Back in Somali waters, pirates seize UN aid ship

NAIROBI, Feb 25 (Reuters) Pirates who disappeared from Somali waters during a battle for control of the nation on land returned today and hijacked a UN-chartered vessel just off the tip of the Horn of Africa.

It was first hijacking reported since the interim government, with Ethiopian military help, late last year drove out Islamists who controlled southern Somalia and had helped crack down on piracy, partly to protect their weapons shipments.

And it was the third seizure of a ship hired to carry food aid by the UN's World Food Programme (WFP) in the past two years, the United Nations and a maritime group said.

The pirates, armed with AK-47s, stormed the Kenyan-owned freighter MV Rozen and its crew of six Kenyans and six Sri Lankans after intercepting it with a speedboat off the northeastern Puntland coast.

''She had just finished unloading in the port of Bosasso,'' Andrew Mwangura, director of the East African Seafarers Assistance Programme, said. ''Up to date, there has been no communication. They have not made any demands at all.'' The WFP's deputy country director for Somalia, Leo van der Velden, said the ship had offloaded a total of 1,800 tonnes of food aid in Bosasso and Berbera, further north.

''It was empty and on its way back to pick up a cargo to go to southern Somalia,'' van der Velden told Reuters by telephone.

''The Rozen was attacked off of Marka last year, but outmaneuvred the pirates that time.'' Mwangura said the group believed to be responsible was a band of pirates based in the port of Harardheere, who have regrouped since the Islamists shut them down in August.

''There have been two attacks earlier this year. They did not succeed but today's did,'' Mwangura said by telephone.

The Islamists said they stopped the pirates to make Somalia's waters safe and because it was against Islamic law.

A report to the United Nations last year said the Islamists actually wanted to recover a weapons shipment the pirates had stolen.

Today's hijacking was the fourth seizure of a ship owned by the Motaku Shipping Agency based in the Kenyan port of Mombasa, Mwangura said.

In a short span in 2005, pirates hijacked three Motaku ships and held one and its crew hostage for nearly 100 days. Two of those ships had been carrying WFP cargo.

Somalia's coastline -- Africa's longest -- is one of the most dangerous in the world because of pirates who prowl its unpatrolled waters, in the absence of a stable government since the overthrow of dictator Mohamed Siad Barre in 1991.

REUTERS SAM RAI2305