Somali piracy has fallen to a three-year low because of co-ordinated action by international navies and the enlistment of armed security guards.
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/ 13 February 2012
A maritime watchdog has warned ships to steer clear of Nigerian waters due to a trio of recent piracy attacks including an assault still underway.
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/ 14 September 2011
A spate of ship hijackings off West Africa indicates the region could emerge as a new piracy "hotspot", a global maritime watchdog has warned.
Pirates kidnapped a record number of seafarers in 2010 in an "alarming" escalation of the crisis centred on Somalia, a maritime watchdog says.
Pirate attacks worldwide more than doubled in the first half of 2009, amid a surge of raids in the Gulf of Aden and the east coast of Somalia.
Pirates seized a British-owned ship and a Taiwan-registered fishing boat after taking three vessels last weekend, officials said on Tuesday.
Pirates were taking two European-owned tankers to Somali coastal havens on Friday and are likely to demand ransoms soon.
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/ 13 February 2009
Heavily armed Somali pirates attacked six ships earlier this week but all managed to escape, a global maritime watchdog said on Friday.
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/ 17 December 2008
Pirates have hijacked a Turkish cargo ship and a Malaysian tug boat and attacked three other vessels in the Gulf of Aden in the past week.
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/ 20 November 2008
Somali pirates who hijacked Saudi oil supertanker Sirius Star on Thursday demanded -million in ransom and set a 10-day deadline.
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/ 1 November 2008
Egypt has called an urgent meeting of Arab countries bordering the Red Sea to combat piracy off Somalia, the Foreign Ministry said on Saturday.
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/ 17 October 2008
India has deployed its navy in the Gulf of Aden near Somalia to protect Indian commercial vessels from pirates, news reports said on Friday.
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/ 15 October 2008
Somali pirates hijacked a Philippines-managed bulk carrier with 21 sailors aboard on Wednesday, a maritime watchdog said.
Somali pirates attacked four ships in what a maritime piracy watchdog said on Friday was a ”critical level” of attacks in the Gulf of Aden.
The increase in piracy in the Gulf of Aden could trigger a humanitarian and environmental disaster in the Horn of Africa, a report warns.
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/ 18 September 2008
Linking the Red Sea to the Indian Ocean, the Gulf of Aden is one of the world’s most important trading routes. It is also the most feared.
Rapidly spreading lawlessness as Somalia collapses in the worst fighting for two nearly decades is fuelling a wave of piracy.
Two vessels have been seized by pirates off the coast of Somalia, the International Maritime Bureau said on Thursday.
Africa remains a piracy hot spot following a spike in attacks in the second quarter of 2008, a marine watchdog said on Friday.
One of the two cargo freighters hijacked off the Somali coast this week was a German owned vessel registered in Gibraltar, a Kenyan maritime official said Friday. The MV Lehmann Timber seized on Wednesday in the Gulf of Aden, was managed by Kehdisgerland GMBH.
Nigeria has become the world piracy ”hot spot”, with its prized oil industry a particular target, and the raiders have exposed flaws in the country’s security. Despite the massive revenues earned from oil, officials concede Nigeria is ill-equipped to combat pirates who ply the seas with speed boats, modern machine guns and radios.
Heavily armed pirates on Monday attacked and damaged a huge oil tanker off the Somali coast using machine guns and rocket-propelled grenades, a Malaysian-based maritime watchdog said. Pirates on five speed boats attacked the tanker, the size of a football field, at about 2.30am GMT in the Gulf of Aden, it said.
An international piracy watchdog on Thursday announced an increase in pirate attacks in global waters and warned seafarers of increasing, violence especially in waters off Nigeria. The London-based International Maritime Bureau (said that worldwide piracy attacks jumped to 49 incidents from January to March this year.
French authorities were working on Saturday to free a luxury cruise yacht and its 30-member crew taken hostage by pirates off the coast of Somalia. ”The defence and foreign affairs ministries are working to act as quickly as possible. I hope … to try to obtain the release of the hostages,” French Prime Minister Francois Fillon said.
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/ 12 November 2007
A crew member of a Japanese chemical tanker hijacked by pirates off the Somali coast on October 28 escaped and has been rescued after spending two days at sea, a maritime official said on Monday. The Golden Nori was hijacked with 23 crew members aboard, including two South Koreans.
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/ 31 October 2007
United States warships are monitoring a Japanese tanker that was hijacked by pirates last weekend off the coast of Somalia. "The pirates are still in control of the ship. They are believed to be armed," Noel Choong, the head of the International Maritime Bureau’s Malaysia-based Piracy Reporting Centre, said.
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/ 22 October 2007
Somali pirates have seized a cargo ship off the East African coast, the head of a local seafarers’ association said on Monday. Gunmen attacked the vessel last Wednesday, said Andrew Mwangura, the programme coordinator of the East Africa Seafarers’ Assistance Programme, but due to chaotic communications with Somalia the incident had taken several days to confirm.
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/ 17 October 2007
Piracy off Somalia is on the rise because an Islamic group that had cracked down on pirates was ousted, an official who tracks piracy cases off Africa’s side of the Indian Ocean said. Earlier, an international watchdog reported maritime pirate attacks worldwide had shot up 14% in the first nine months of 2007.
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/ 3 September 2007
Forget the blazing guns of yesteryear — these days naval warfare is a high-tech and sophisticated operation. This became clear on Monday as an exercise involving Nato warships and the South African Navy got under way off the South African coast.