Charcoal Smuggling Ship Burns Out In Mogadishu

MV AL MAJAN started burning Friday and went under Sunday inside Somalia's main port. A cargo ship smuggling illegal charcoal from Kisimayo to Oman has caught fire, burned out and went partly under.

Reports say that ship had taken illegally charcoal from Kisimayo the southern port of Somalia under the control Somali fundamental Islamists of and had entered Friday Somalia's largest port, the Mogadishu seaport, for a stopover.

“Yes, well. I can see it. Oh! Oh! It is blazing really. I am near the seaport of Mogadishu. It is carrying charcoal. No I do not know what country it is from. People were saying it was from Oman, but unfortunately set on fire. I don’t know what caused the burning,” one witnesses who was around the seaport told Shabelle radio.

‘The ship docked while it was partly burning and we don’t think that it can be salvaged from the burning, and here in the seaport we don’t have standard equipment to fight the fire’ said Engineer Abdi Jinow Alasow the manager of Mogadishu seaport speaking to Somaliweyn Website on Saturday.

The captain of the ship has added that it was not in his route to reach Mogadishu seaport, but thought that they can help him extinguish the fire, and thinks that things will end up in vain.
It was just last year when such a cargo ship carrying charcoal, which is strictly banned from being exported from Somalia, went on fire at the seaport of Mogadishu. Back then the fire was lastly put out by the African Union troops AMISOM who are controlling the port of the capital.

Since years environmental organizations like ECOTERRA Intl. have demanded from Sultan Quabous, the ruler of the Sultanate of Oman, who otherwise is know for his green policies, and other heads of the Gulf states that the illegal import of charcoal from Somalia also must be stopped from the side of those states which allow the import.

There is no comment from officials of the transitional government and AMSIOM who are managing the port. The Somali seaports have only limited equipment to stop any such fires on a vessel.

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