The manager of the 4-star Arabian Courtyard says there will be no music or dancing to ring in the New Year, though the hotel’s restaurants and bars will stay open.

It’s unclear if other hotels will follow suit. Most say they cannot yet comment on whether the ban will affect the city’s famous champagne dinners and raucous bar bashes.

Organizers also say they don’t know if a widely publicized Shakira concert in Abu Dhabi will go ahead.

Some celebrations have also been canceled in Jordan and Egypt in solidarity with Gaza.

International Herald Tribune

Admiral Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said on Monday that he was surprised both by the size of the vessel the pirates had hijacked and by its distance from the shore.

“What strikes me about this particular supertanker is how far away from Africa it was. As I understand it, it’s about 450 miles south east of Kenya,” he told a Pentagon briefing in Washington, DC. “That’s the longest distance I’ve seen for any of these incidents.”

The BBC quoted a naval spokesman as saying the tanker, the Sirius Star, was headed for the Somali coast, where it was “nearing an anchorage point” at Eyl, a port in Puntland which is popular with Somali pirates.

The Sirius Star is the biggest ship to have been seized by Somali pirates so far. It has 25 crew members aboard and was heading to the U.S. via the Cape of Good Hope.

The Combined Maritime Forces (CMF) of the U.S.-led military coalition which patrols the Red Sea, the Arabian Gulf and the Indian Ocean have recorded a reduction in successful piracy attacks from 53 percent in August to 31 percent in October.

However, Mullen noted that despite the drop in the proportion of attacks that succeeded, “we’ve seen an extraordinary rise in the overall numbers.”

The Liberian-flagged vessel is operated by the Dubai – based company, Vela International. Al Jazeera reported that it was carrying almost U.S. $100 million worth of oil. In the past, such hijackings have usually been followed by ransom demands issued by the pirates to ship owners.

allAfrica.com

The INS Tabar opened fire on a pirate “mother ship” after it came under attack, a government statement said.

There has been a surge in piracy incidents off Somalia.

The Saudi-owned Sirius Star supertanker is currently anchored off the Somali coast after the vessel and its 25 crew were seized by pirates.

Vela International, operators of the Sirius Star, told the BBC no demands had yet been received from the pirates. The company also said all the crew were safe.

The biggest tanker ever hijacked, Sirius Star is carrying a cargo of two million barrels – a quarter of Saudi Arabia’s daily output – worth more than $100m (£67m).

Explosions

India is among several countries are already patrolling the Gulf of Aden, one of the world’s busiest shipping lanes which connects the Red Sea and the Indian Ocean.

The Indian navy said the Tabar spotted a pirate vessel while patrolling 285 nautical miles (528km) south-west of Salalah in Oman, on Tuesday evening.

When it demanded the vessel stop for investigation, the pirate ship responded by threatening to “blow up the naval warship if it closed on her”, the statement said.

The navy said the pirates on board were armed with guns and rocket propelled grenade launchers. They threatened to blow up the INS Tabar and then fired on it.

The Indians say they retaliated by opening fire and that there was an explosion on the pirate vessel, which sank.

“Fire broke out on the vessel and explosions were heard, possibly due to exploding ammunition that was stored in the vessel,” the Indian navy said.

Some of the pirates tried to escape on two speedboats – the Indian sailors gave chase but one boat was later found abandoned, while a second boat escaped.

The Tabar has been patrolling the Gulf of Aden since 23 October, and has escorted 35 ships safely during the “pirate-infested waters”, the statement said.

Last week, an helicopter-borne Indian marine commandos stopped pirates from boarding and hijacking an Indian merchant vessel.

Ransoms

On Tuesday, a cargo ship and a fishing vessel became the latest to join more than 90 civilian vessels attacked by the pirates this year.

A 25-crew cargo vessel transporting wheat to Iran was attacked in the Gulf of Aden while contact was lost with the crew of 12 on the fishing boat.

Piracy in the area is estimated to have cost up to $30m in ransoms so far this year, according to a recent report by a UK think-tank.

The pirates who seized the Sirius Star are a sophisticated group with contacts in Dubai and neighbouring countries, says the BBC Somali Service’s Yusuf Garaad.

Much of their ransom money from previous hijackings has been used to buy new boats and weapons as well as develop a network across the Horn of Africa, he adds.

The hijackings off the coast of East Africa and the Gulf of Aden – an area of more than 1m sq miles (2.6m sq km) – make up one-third of all global piracy incidents this year, according the International Maritime Board.

Somalia has not had a functioning national government since 1991 and has suffered continuing civil strife.

Shipping companies are now weighing up the risks of using the short-cut route to Europe via the Suez canal.

BBC NEWS

It said the Iraqi charge d’affaires had been summoned to the Syrian Foreign Ministry in Damascus and told that economic cooperation was being frozen, as was cooperation between security services.

Syria says eight civilians were killed in Sunday’s cross-border, helicopter-backed attack on the village of al-Sukkariya, while witnesses said seven people were killed and one man was abducted.

Thousands of people marched in the streets of Damascus on Thursday to protest the raid. Protestors included dozens of students from the Syrian region of Bokmal, the location of Sunday’s raid.

They protested near the US embassy, which was surrounded by Syrian riot police and closed for the day.

The US government has not commented officially on the raid, but unofficial reports say an al-Qaeda terrorist was killed or wounded in the attack.

Al-Arabiya: