Western Freedom

Since September, Somali pirates have robbed three vessels and hijacked a tug and barge off Tioman island. Some 100 ships have been attacked off the Somali coast this year, of which 40 vessels have been hijacked. Thirteen ships remain in the hands of pirates, including a Saudi supertanker filled with $100 million of crude and a Ukrainian ship loaded with 33 battle tanks.

Last Saturday, pirates armed with rocket-propelled grenades and automatic weapons attacked a Dutch-operated container ship off the coast of Tanzania but failed to hijack the vessel.

The attack Saturday shows the pirates are becoming bolder and extending their reach further from their base in Somalia, said Noel Choong, who heads the International Maritime Bureau’s piracy reporting center in Kuala Lumpur.

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Associated Press:

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — Somali pirates hijacked a supertanker hundreds of miles off the Horn of Africa, seizing the Saudi-owned ship loaded with crude and its 25-member crew, the U.S. Navy said Monday.

It was the largest ship pirates have seized, and the farthest out to sea they have successfully struck.

The hijacking highlighted the vulnerability of even very large ships and pointed to widening ambitions and capabilities among ransom-hungry pirates who have carried out a surge of attacks this year off Somalia.

Saturday’s hijacking of the MV Sirius Star tanker occurred in the Indian Ocean far south of the zone patrolled by international warships in the busy Gulf of Aden shipping channel, which leads to and from the Suez Canal. A U.S. Navy spokesman said the bandits were taking it to a Somali port that has become a haven for seized ships and bandits trying to force ransoms for them.

Maritime security experts said they have tracked a troubling spread in pirate activity southward into a vast area of ocean that would be extremely difficult and costly to patrol, and this hijacking fits that pattern.

“It is very alarming,” said Cyrus Mody, manager of the International Maritime Bureau. “It had been slightly more easy to get it under control in the Gulf of Aden because it is a comparatively smaller area of water which has to be patrolled, but this is huge.”

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