NAIROBI, Nov. 28 (Xinhua) -- Three crew members on a chemical tanker hijacked off the coast of Somalia have escaped by jumping overboard, a regional maritime official confirmed on Friday.

    Andrew Mwangura, East Africa's Coordinator of the Seafarers Assistance Program (SAP) could not confirm the nationalities of the crew members but reports said the three were Britons.

    The escape followed the seizure of the Liberian-flagged Biscaglia in the Gulf of Aden on Friday.

    "Three crew members escaped by jumping overboard and were rescued by a warship on patrol in the region which was send there to intervene in the attack," Mwangura told Xinhua by telephone.

    Reports say the three Britons worked for Anti-Piracy Maritime Security Solutions, a shipping protection firm headquartered in Poole. There was no further word on their condition.

    The seizure of the chemical tanker was the latest in a series of increasingly brazen attacks on commercial and private shipping passing through the strategically crucial Gulf of Aden, the key conduit for Arabian oil heading to Europe and North America.

    The Sirius Star, a Saudi supertanker carrying 100 million U.S. dollars worth of crude oil, was hijacked earlier this month and is still being held at anchor off the eastern Somali coast close to the pirate town of Eyl.

    A ransom of at least 15 million dollars has been demanded. There are 18 ships currently held by Somali gunmen.

    The latest hijacking also comes as pirates released the Maltese-flagged Greek ship MV Centauri, which was captured in September in the Indian Ocean with 26 Filipinos.

    The MV Genius was hijacked on the same day as MV Faina, a Ukrainian ship that was carrying a cargo of tanks and weapons, and it is still being held by pirates.

    NATO-led security operations in the Gulf have been stepped up this year in effort to protect the key maritime corridor leading to the Suez Canal.