All crew members are safe and the 300,000-ton, oil-laden tanker anchored Wednesday night 7 kilometres off the coast of the Horn of Africa country, a ministry official said, citing information received from the tanker's crew and a South Korean destroyer trailing the vessel.
'The captain conveyed a warning from the pirates that any provocative action would jeopardize the safety of the seized crew members,' the official said of a message relayed to the destroyer.
The pirates warned the destroyer that if it came any closer, it would put the crew at risk, the official said.
The ministry also said that first contact between the tanker's owner, Samho Shipping Co, and the pirates had been made, but it did release what demands the hijackers had made.
The tanker with 19 Filipino and five South Korean crew members on board was seized Sunday while travelling from Iraq to the United States. It was taken about 1,850 kilometres off Somalia, which is home to an increasing number of pirates who have disrupted shipping in the Gulf of Aden and Indian Ocean and collected tens of millions of dollars in ransoms last year.
The distance of the hijacking from the Somali coast triggered concerns that the pirates were now widening their area of attack.
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