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MOSCOW: Russian warships were scouring the Atlantic Ocean on Thursday for a cargo ship whose disappearance has sparked an international mystery amid rumours of piracy and mafia scores, the navy said.
The hunt is being led by the patrol ship "Ladny" from Russia's Black Sea Fleet, which passed through the Straits of Gibraltar on Wednesday on route to join an international search underway for the vessel.
"The information is being reported to Russia's naval command and is constantly being analysed," a navy spokesman was quoted by the Interfax news agency as saying.
Russian President Dmitry Medvedev tasked the navy Wednesday "to take all necessary measures to find and free" the Arctic Sea and its 15-strong Russian crew.
The Maltese-flagged, Finnish-chartered ship dropped off radar shortly after passing through the English Channel on July 28.
The vessel may have been under the control of pirates at the time after being boarded by masked men in Swedish waters five days earlier, coastguard officials said, raising fears of unprecedented piracy in European waters.
"I have never heard of such a situation in my life," the editor of the respected Sovfracht Maritime Bulletin Mikhail Voitenko told AFP.
But he discounted theories that the ship was prey to pirates operating in European waters: "Why would pirates go to such lengths when there are enough ships sitting fully loaded at the dock?"
"It was a completely unexceptional cargo," Voitenko said of the bulk carrier which was due to deliver a load of timber estimated at 2 million dollars (1.4 million euros) in the Algerian port of Bejaia.
Mostly likely, the Russian-crew was caught in a mafia feud over illicit goods, he said.
"I think this must be linked to an attempt to covertly ship some kind of secret cargo, and someone really didn't want this cargo to get to its destination," he said. - AFP/de
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