CAIRO-Somali pirates, who have been seizing an Egyptian vessel since earlier this month, have taken the Egyptian crewmen on board to an unknown location, a wife of one crew has said. "I got a call from my husband on Wednesday informing me that the situation has gone from bad to worse after the managers of the ship refused to pay ransom," said Farida Farouq, the wife of the chief engineer on the MV Suez cargo vessel. Pirates hijacked the Panama-flagged ship with 23 crew on board on August 2. The vessel is operated by the Red Sea Navigation Company, based in Egypt's Port Said. The 17,300 tonne ship carrying cement bags came under small arms fire while sailing in a recommended shipping lane. Its crew were from Egypt, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and India. The Red Sea Navigation Company paid a $1.5 million ransom last year for another hijacked ship. The London-headquartered International Maritime Bureau said its piracy reporting centre in Kuala Lumpur logged a total of 196 pirate incidents globally from January to June 2010. There were 31 successful hijackings in that period and 27 of those were off the coast of Somalia or in the Gulf of Aden. Pirates from impoverished Somalia, which is battling an Islamist insurgency, have made tens of millions of dollars in ransoms from seizing ships in the Indian Ocean and Gulf of Aden.
