Iran firm says trying to contact hijacked grain ship

By Edmund Blair

TEHRAN (Reuters) - An Iranian shipping firm said on Wednesday it was trying to contact a Hong Kong-flagged ship carrying wheat to Iran that it had chartered and that had been hijacked by Somali pirates.

The Delight, with a crew of 25, was captured off the Yemen coast on Tuesday and was heading for Somalia, Hong Kong officials have said. A Saudi oil supertanker and a Greek bulk carrier have also been hijacked in recent days.

"Still we have no news. There was no success in getting in contact with this vessel. We couldn't get through," an official from the Islamic Republic of Iran Shipping Lines (IRISL) said.

Another IRISL bulk carrier, Iran Deyanat, was hijacked by pirates on August 21 and released on October 10.

IRISL, Iran's biggest shipping firm, said in October it had told its vessels to string barbed wire on their decks and put crew on the alert for pirates when sailing in dangerous waters.

The Delight loaded wheat in the German Baltic Sea port of Rostock in late October, a spokesman for the port operating company HER said. The Iranian official said it was carrying about 36,000 metric tons of wheat.

Rostock is one of Germany's two major grain export ports. Iran has been purchasing wheat heavily in the international market in recent months after drought devastated its own crop.

Lloyd's List reported the ship was a 43,218 dwt vessel and was heading to the Iranian port of Bandar Abbas.

Mohammad Mehdi Rasekh, member of the IRISL board, said IRISL would have to discuss any ransom payment with the Hong Kong owners of the vessel, Iran's ILNA news agency reported.

"Iran rented this ship and we should discuss with Hong Kong who should pay the ransom because we only rented it," he said, adding that the crew included seven Iranians.

The official who spoke to Reuters said no ransom had been requested as there had been no communication with the vessel.

(Additional reporting by Parisa Hafezi in Tehran and Michael Hogan in Hamburg, editing by Tim Pearce)