Somali pirate “happy time” about to end?
Kenya and Egypt are calling for action against Somali pirates operating in the Gulf of Aden while the International Maritime Bureau (IMB) reports that 77 incidents involving sea robbers have been reported since January in that sea way.
The most recent were three last week on Tuesday and one on Wednesday.
On Wednesday last week pirates armed with automatic weapons aboard two speedboats opened fire on a bulk carrier underway. “The pirates boarded and hijacked the vessel and took the 20 crew as hostage. They then sailed the vessel to an undisclosed location in Somalia. The vessel was carrying a cargo of iron ore pellets from Pointe Noire, Canada to Rizhao, China when it was hijacked,” the IMB web site says of the incident.
Pirates fired on ships with small arms in all three incidents reported on Tuesday. In the first incident, at 8am, pirates on speedboats fired at a tanker and attempted to board. The ship took evasive action, transmitted mayday messages and sounded the foghorn. The pirates moved off after 10 minutes.
Read more at: DefenceWeb
Two more vessels seized by pirates off Somali coast
Two vessels, an Iranian bulk carrier and a Japanese-operated tanker, have been seized by pirates off the coast of Somalia, the International Maritime Bureau (IMB) said on Thursday.
"Both ships were attacked and hijacked this morning [Thursday]," said Noel Chong, head of the IMB piracy reporting centre in Kuala Lumpur.
The Japanese tanker had 19 crew on board, but no Japanese nationals, Chong said.
Thursday's seizures came after a Malaysian oil tanker, with 39 crew on board and laden with palm oil, was hijacked on Wednesday in the Gulf of Aden.
Piracy is rife off Somalia, which has been mired in anarchy since warlords overthrew a dictator in 1991.
Last week, pirates from Somalia hijacked two ships -- a Thai cargo ship, the MV Thor Star, and a Nigerian tug boat, the MT Yenegoa Ocean.
Somali pirates are still holding a Japanese-managed bulk vessel, the MV Stella Maris, which was hijacked on July 20.
Source: Mail & Guardian Online
Pirates can bloody SA waters, warns UN
Ruthless sea pirates who plunder hundreds of ships each year off the coast of Africa are moving south, threatening South African waters, experts have warned.
The United Nations Security Council and international maritime safety organisations have urged the Southern African Development Community (SADC) to take drastic action against gangs of heavily armed pirates.
The calls follow South African Intelligence Minister Ronnie Kasrils' warnings last year that sea piracy was creeping closer and closer to South Africa and that the country needed to "move swiftly" and establish good intelligence networks to stop pirate attacks.
Between January and November, 48 ships were attacked around Africa by gangs of pirates armed with an assortment of weapons, including surface-to-surface missiles, rocket propelled grenades, armed helicopters and heavy calibre machine-guns such as anti-aircraft guns.
'Pirates are moving their operations further south' Pirates, many of whom operate "phantom" ships disguised as vessels in distress, use intelligence operatives stationed at Richards Bay, Durban, Port Elizabeth and Cape Town harbours to feed organised crime syndicates with information detailing sailing times, destinations, routes, cargos and numbers of crew.
The warning of pirate attacks occurring in South African waters comes as the International Maritime Bureau (IMB) and International Maritime Organisation (IMO) release their statistics on world pirate attacks.
According to the IMB and IMO, between January and September 174 ships were attacked by pirates worldwide. This is down from the 205 attacks in 2005. Of the 174 attacks, pirates boarded 113 vessels, hijacked 11, took 163 sailors hostage, including 14 Nigerian naval officers, kidnapped 20 sailors and murdered six.
According to the IMB, the latest attack in SADC waters took place 10 days ago when 15 pirates in a high-powered speedboat attacked a container ship waiting to berth in Dar es Salaam harbour in Tanzania.
Two days before the attack, 10 Somali pirates hijacked a general cargo vessel travelling from Richards Bay to the United Arab Emirates off the Somali coast using a helicopter gunship and several specially modified speedboats. The ship was carrying charcoal. The attack took place near the port of Mogadishu.
South Africa needed to step in and help its neighbours The IMB said a group in control of parts of Somalia dispatched several high-powered speed boats to chase the vessel. Following a fierce four-hour gunfight, the search and recovery team, who killed two pirates and arrested eight others, regained control of the vessel and returned it to its owners. Unconfirmed reports said 30 surface-to-surface missiles were seized.
Tshwane University of Technology safety and security department lecturer Henri Fouche said the escalation of attacks showed it was just a matter of time before South Africa was targeted.
"It is clear that pirates are moving their operations further south as they discover there are few, if any, navies operating in southern African waters, especially around countries like Mozambique, Madagascar, Seychelles, Comoros and Namibia.
"This means pirates will continue to move south, coming closer to South Africa where yachts, fishing ships and cargo vessels will be attacked," Fouche said.
He said another reason South Africa and other SADC countries were becoming a major target for pirates was the recent discovery of oil and gas off the Tanzanian coast and the fact that six million tons of oil were transported around South Africa's western coast every month making this "a gem" for pirates.
He said: "It is therefore imperative that we start assist our neighbouring countries to stop these attacks before they reach our shores."
Read more at: Independent Online
