Sirius Star Found --4.595N, 48.085E



The Guardian's satellite pictures, which were shot a week ago, showed the Sirius Star five miles off the coast at a latitude of 4.595N and a longitude of 48.085E.

From a vantage point 423 miles above the Earth, the lawless waters of the Gulf of Aden appear tranquil and the 330-metre-long ship sitting low under a �68m cargo looks like a tiny green cigar floating on an inky ocean.

These pictures, taken by a satellite commissioned by the Guardian and hurtling over Africa at four miles a second, show the Sirius Star, the Saudi supertanker which 12 days ago became the biggest prize ever seized by the Somali pirates who have claimed the Gulf of Aden as their hunting ground.



An IKONOS satellite image of the pirated Saudi supertanker Sirius Star.


The images also reveal a triangle of ships, three of the 40 vessels to have been hijacked in Somali waters this year. Although not as vast as the Sirius Star, the Stolt Strength, the African Sanderling and the Yasa Neslihan are together home to 64 seafarers, two-thirds of them from the Philippines.

With the taking of the Sirius Star and its 25-strong crew a little before 9am on November 15, the number of international seafarers floating in hijack limbo off the coast of Somalia rose to almost 300 and the issue of piracy surged to the top of news bulletins around the world.

The multinational composition of the crew - 19 Filipinos, two Britons, two Poles, one Croat and one Saudi Arabian - may have guaranteed global coverage, but the Sirius's sheer size and huge, precious cargo proved equally arresting.

The ship, very nearly a third of a kilometre long from bow to stern, was carrying 2m barrels of oil from Saudi Arabia to the US, almost a quarter of the kingdom's daily oil production.

And although the pirates who swarmed up the side of the supertanker may have halved their original ransom demand to $15m (�9.8m), the situation is no closer to a resolution.............................................>

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