CAIRO (AlArabiya.net)
Hundreds of passengers aboard a German luxury cruise ship decided to flee via air on Wednesday as they voted to take a free flight and five-star accommodation in Dubai rather than sailing through the pirate-infested Gulf of Aden.
The passengers were headed to Dubai from Italy when their captain informed them that the German government issued a piracy warning for the Gulf of Aden.
The German MS Columbus therefore docked in the Red Sea port of Hodeida in Yemen on Wednesday to evacuate 420 passengers so they could avoid sailing through dangerous waters and instead travel by plane to the next port on the agenda.
Some 120 passengers took chartered flights to Dubai on the opposite side of the Arabian Peninsula while others decided to spend a few days in Yemen before traveling by bus to the capital Sanaa, where they will take chartered planes to Dubai.
Port officials in Hodeida told AlArabiya news channel that the cruise liner’s German captain contacted them to request passage to drop off the passengers after the German government refused to send a military escort to assist the ship through the Gulf of Aden.
Meanwhile the ship with its crew will sail through the waters between Yemen and Somalia, an area that has witnessed a spate of pirate attacks.
After three days in Dubai, the evacuated passengers are to leave to Oman to join their ship.
The decision to evacuate passengers in Yemen came after last week's suspected attacks on another German cruise ship, the MS Astor, which sailed through the Gulf of Aden.
The frigate Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, a German warship, chased off two suspicious speedboats on Nov. 28. |
