![]() ![]() These developments make military intervention even more arduous and highlight the emphatic need for ships to take every possible measure to avoid being taken in the first instance.” “Furthermore, recent attacks on ships sailing at far distances from the Somali coast and in areas north and east of the Horn of Africa, which, until now, were considered relatively safe, have made an already complicated issue even more difficult. “Piracy attacks are becoming more violent and the tactics used by pirates include using hijacked ships as bases (‘mother ships’) for carrying out further attacks, with their crews remaining on board as ‘human shields,” according to the IMO. “The overall level is still fairly high.”Īt the moment, the IMO reported Monday, “685 seafarers of various nationalities are being held for ransom on board 30 ships under various flags at various locations off the extensive Somali coastline – reflecting a situation which has progressively worsened over the last 12 months.” “The number of attacks remains unabated this year,” says Jennifer Cooke, director of the Africa program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. The trawler had been held for four months, reportedly used as a “mother ship” for pirates attacking other vessels. On Tuesday, the South Korean fishing trawler Keummi 305 arrived in the Kenyan port of Mombasa after its release last week by Somali pirates. The day before that, reports the Associated Press, Somali pirates firing small arms and rocket-propelled grenades hijacked an Italian-flagged oil tanker in the Indian Ocean that had been heading from Sudan to Malaysia. Authorities have lost contact with the ship. The Greek-flagged Irene SL, carrying 266,000 tons of crude oil and a 25-man crew, was seized last week 200 nautical miles east of Oman. In recent days, two supertankers have been attacked by pirates. The stiff prison sentence given a Somali pirate in US federal court in Manhattan Wednesday – nearly 34 years – is meant to be a deterrent to armed attackers who would board and hold for ransom unarmed commercial ships.īut the unresolved dilemma in many cases for those battling piracy is how to get beyond the often very poor young men recruited as pirates and get at the organizers who finance the piracy operations.Īccording to the International Maritime Organization (IMO), in the past 12 months there have been 286 piracy-related incidents off the coast of Somalia resulting in 67 hijacked ships, with 1,130 seafarers on board. ![]()
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