TEHRAN: An Iranian shipping firm said yesterday it was trying to contact a Hong Kong-flagged ship carrying wheat to Iran that it had chartered and that had been hijacked by Somali pirates.

The Delight, with a crew of 25, was captured off the Yemen coast and was heading for Somalia, Hong Kong officials have said.

"Still we have no news. There was no success in getting in contact with this vessel. We couldn't get through," an official from the Islamic Republic of Iran Shipping Lines (IRISL) said.

Another IRISL bulk carrier, Iran Deyanat, was hijacked by pirates on August 21 and released on October 10.

IRISL, Iran's biggest shipping firm, said in October it had told its vessels to string barbed wire on their decks and put crew on the alert for pirates when sailing in dangerous waters.

The Delight loaded wheat in the German Baltic Sea port of Rostock in late October, a spokesman for the port operating company HER said. The Iranian official said it was carrying about 36,000 tonnes of wheat.

Rostock is one of Germany's two major grain export ports. The ship was heading to the Iranian port of Bandar Abbas.

Mohammad Mehdi Rasekh, member of the IRISL board, said IRISL would have to discuss any ransom payment with the Hong Kong owners of the vessel.