JORDAN—A Jordanian ship carrying humanitarian aid has lost contact with authorities and is believed to have been hijacked by pirates off the coast of Somalia, the kingdom’s transport minister said over the weekend.

Contact with the Victoria was lost at 8 a.m. Saturday, Minister of Transportation Alaa Batayneh said in comments carried by the government-run Petra news agency.

“It is suspected the ship was subjected to piracy,” Batayneh said, adding that the vessel, which is owned by a United Arab Emirates company, disappeared 35 miles off the coast of Somalia and was carrying 4,200 tons of sugar donated by Denmark as humanitarian aid to Somalia.

Authorities lost contact with the vessel on its way from India to the Somali capital of Mogadishu. The crew of about 12 includes people from Pakistan, India, Bangladesh and Tanzania, Batayneh said. He ordered Jordanian authorities to warn Jordanian ships and those carrying the kingdom’s flag to avoid Somali waters and to be vigilant if they have to travel through them.

About 40 ships of different nationalities carry the Jordanian flag. Jordan provides administrative assistance to those vessels in international ports, Batayneh said.

Pirates attacked ships off Somalia’s coast 26 times in the first four months of 2008, from 32 incidents in all of 2007. The Security Council asked all UN member-nations on May 15 to “take action to protect shipping involved with the transportation and delivery of humanitarian aid to Somalia.”

Somalia has been wracked by violence since the UN-backed Transitional Federal Government ousted an Islamic militia from southern and central parts of the country in January 2007. The nation hasn’t had a functioning central administration since the 1991 removal of dictator Mohammed Siad Barre.

Somalia is at the entrance to the Gulf of Aden, which leads to the Red Sea and the Suez Canal, one of the world’s most important shipping lanes.

The Security Council is considering a US-drafted resolution that would give UN authorization for any nation’s warships to pursue pirates into Somalia’s territorial waters. (Bloomberg)

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