The search for the Captain Uskov freighter and its Russian 17-member crew in the East China Sea yielded no result in the past 24 hours and experts fear the vessel could have been hijacked by sea pirates, Itar-Tass reports.
“The Hong Kong zone is among the five pirate hot spots of the world, where attacks on merchant marine fleet are most frequent,” Chairman of the Far Eastern branch of the Russian Trade Union of Seamen Nikolai Sukhanov told Tass on Friday.
He recalled that pirates hijacked 18 vessels in 2007 and kept 292 seamen hostage.
Sukhanov said the crew of the Captain Uskov is aged from 21 to 52 and its Captain Sergei Nranyan is 40.
The vessel left Nakhodka for Hong Kong on January 15 with a load of metal and the last radio contact with it was reported on January 20 when it sailed 212 miles east of Shanghai.
A Japanese coat guard aircraft and three Russian ships were engaged in the search for the missing freighter. No trace of the vessel flying the Cambodian flag was found in the East China Sea.
Head of the Vladivostok-based sea rescue center Konstantin Sviridov said the Trader ship will sail on Friday to the point of the last radio contact with the Captain Uskov. Japanese rescuers will also continue the search.