South Korean forces storm freighter and free crew held by Somali pirates

Published on Friday 21 January 2011 14:54

THIS is the moment that South Korean special forces stormed a hijacked freighter in the Arabian Sea.

Commandos scrambled up a ladder onto the deck at dawn yesterday after Somali pirates armed with AK-47 assault rifles and anti-tank missiles seized the vessel.

When the operation ended five hours later, 21 hostages had been rescued, eight Somali pirates killed and five captured.

The ship's bridge was covered in pockmarks from heavy fire. One of the hostages was wounded, but all were alive - a remarkable end to a risky rescue.

The daring and rare raid - what president Lee Myung-bak called a "perfect operation" - handed South Korea a stunning success in the battle against pirates who prey on shipping in the waters between Africa and the Arabian peninsula.

It was also a triumph for Mr Lee, whose government suffered harsh criticism at home in the weeks following a North Korean attack in November on a South Korean island near disputed waters. Critics said Mr Lee's armed forces were too slow and weak in their response to the attack, which killed two marines and two civilians.

A wife of one of the South Korean crew wept in gratitude as the hijacking came to an end.

"Family members couldn't sleep or eat and prayed for a safe return. I am very relieved," she told the Yonhap news agency.

Yesterday's operation in the sea between Oman and Africa came a week after the Somali attackers seized the Samho Jewelry, a 11,500-ton chemical carrier, as it was sailing from the United Arab Emirates to Sri Lanka.

During yesterday's rescue, the South Korean captain was shot by a pirate. He was taken by a helicopter to a nearby country for treatment. The 20 other crew members - seven South Koreans, two Indonesians and 11 from Burma - were rescued unharmed, he said.

"We will not tolerate any behaviour that threatens the lives and safety of our people in the future," Mr Lee said in a televised statement.

Other countries' special forces have launched several raids to rescue pirated ships in the past few months, but only once they were assured the crew was locked in a safe room, commonly referred to as a "citadel". Those rescues happened just hours, not days, after capture, launched as soon as the crew's safety was confirmed.

The raid on the Samho Jewelry was rare because it happened a week after the ship was seized; it was not clear if the crew was in a citadel. It seems the captain at least was not.

The authorities are usually reluctant to launch such raids because of the risk of harm to hostages. A French rescue in 2009, that came two days after a yacht was seized, led to the death of one hostage.

Yesterday's raid marked the first rescue operation by a South Korean navy vessel that has been deployed in the Gulf of Aden to help fight piracy since 2009.

Countries have different criteria for deciding whether to launch raids, said Graeme Gibbon-Brooks, the head of Dryad Maritime Intelligence, which provides information about piracy to shipping companies. Some countries are aggressive, but others consider it is better to wait out the pirates to avoid casualties. But he said it's unlikely the pirates would try to retaliate by harming other crews. That "would be spectacularly unwise", he said. "Somalis are known for being good business people and I think that would lead to very a quick collapse of their business model," he added.

Somalia has not had a government since 1991, during which time piracy has flourished, sometimes yielding multi-million pound ransoms. The pirates support small businesses that supply them.

There are now 29 vessels and 703 hostages being held by pirates off the coast of Somalia.