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NAIROBI, Kenya – Signaling a new offensive mindset, international military officials vowed Friday to fight the pirates as swarms of Somalis moved into the waters off East Africa. Four shootouts with pirates showed that high-seas attacks are intensifying with the end of the monsoon season. Nearly half the 47 ships hijacked off Somalia last year were taken in March and April — the most dangerous months of the year for ships in the Gulf of Aden and Indian Ocean. In the most serious skirmish Friday, six pirates attacked a vessel before breaking off and chasing the French fishing boat Torre...

"Pirates 'smuggling al-Qaeda fighters' into Somalia Somali Islamists bent on turning their land into an international haven for Al Qaeda are using pirate gangs to offer foreign militants safe passage into the country, The Sunday Telegraph has been told." SNIPPET: "The Taliban-style Shabab group , which has already siezed control of much of the lawless nation, has enlisted the pirates' services to smuggle in al-Qaeda fighters from across the Middle East, according to Somali government ministers. They claim that up to 1,000 have arrived in recent months, swelling the ranks of the Shabab in its bid to topple the fragile...

The captain of Linda Lou, a 60m Lurssen built superyacht enroute to Dubai experienced troubles with a possible pirate attack.

A NATO destroyer has sunk a pirate mothership in the Indian Ocean off the Somali coast after allowing the crew to leave, the alliance said Monday. Shona Lowe, an anti-piracy spokeswoman, said the HDMS Absalon — the Danish flagship of the three-vessel NATO flotilla in the region — disrupted a pirate operation by "scuttling" one of the large boats used by Somali gangs to transport attack teams to piracy hunting areas far off the coast. The mothership was fired on and sunk after its crew members were transferred to a smaller boat in tow, which was allowed to return to...

NAPLES, Italy — As the world struggles to stop piracy in the waters off the coast of Africa and the Middle East, several companies have stepped forward to provide armed escort boats for commercial ships. Small, fast boats with a handful of armed mariners are an "emerging way to handle the [piracy] problem in a safe way," said Jim Jorrie, CEO of Espada Logistics and Security-MENA, a San Antonio-based company offering such services. But shipping industry experts frown on the practice. "It slightly smacks of vigilantism to me," said Tony Mason, secretary general of the International Chamber of Shipping and...

(Science research, marine life, suffering in wake of increased violence.) Ships getting hijacked in the Indian Ocean aren't the only consequence of an increase in piracy. According to a New Scientist story, scientists gathering data about fish stocks and threatened species have been virtually shut out of the area due to increased security concerns. This has left the monitoring of illegal poaching almost completely unchecked. "We can't monitor and we can't do experiments because of the pirates," says Laurent Dagorn of France's Research Institute for Development (IRD). As a result, piracy may be increasing harmful by-catch. To avoid being attacked,...

Danish forces free ship captured by pirates NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) - Danish special forces stormed a ship captured by armed Somali pirates Friday and freed the 25 crew on board, an EU naval spokesman said, marking the first time a warship has intervened during a hijacking. After the vessel Ariella sent out a distress signal early Friday, the Danish warship Absalon sent a helicopter to confirm the presence of pirates, and communicated with the crew to ensure they were in a safe location, said Cmdr. John Harbour, spokesman for the European Union Naval Force. Then Danish special forces aboard the...

British couple kidnapped by pirates while sailing off the east coast of Africa fear that they could be killed within days, the Times of London reported. Paul Chandler, 59, a retired quantity surveyor, and Rachel Chandler, 55, an economist, disappeared after heading from the Seychelles towards Tanzania in their yacht, Lynn Rival, on October 23, 2009. In an interview with ITV News broadcast Thursday night Chandler said that he was “just existing in hope.” “I’m afraid that they will just kill us and abandon us in the desert

At least six people have been killed during intense fighting between rival Somali pirates arguing over a record ransom paid for an oil-laden Greek supertanker, elders and pirates said on Tuesday. Three pirates and a civilian were killed in the latest bout of fighting that erupted in the town of Harardhere late Monday, elders and pirates told AFP by phone. Tension has been high in the central Somali pirate lair ever since an estimated seven million dollars were dropped by a small plane on Sunday for the release of the VLCC Maran Centaurus, a Greek-flagged supertanker a third of a...

MOGADISHU (Reuters) - Somali pirates freed a Greek-flagged tanker carrying 2 million barrels of oil on Monday, a day after the biggest ransom yet paid to them was dropped onto its deck, the pirates and a maritime official said. The Maran Centaurus was seized on November 29 with 16 Filipinos, nine Greeks, two Ukrainians and a Romanian on board. An aircraft dropped a ransom believed to be between $5.5 million and $7 million onto the vessel on Sunday, officials said. "We have agreed to solve our disagreements and release the ship. It is free and sailing away now," one of...

The Secret Anti-China Message Behind Obama's Mission To Yemen Joe Weisenthal Jan. 9, 2010, 11:13 AM The war on terror is back, though the story has moved from Afghanistan (which is ostensibly now in nation-building mode) to Yemen, which up until recently, many Americans probably had never heard of. Asia Times has an excellent overview of the situation written by former Indian ambassador M K Bhadrakumar. What's most interesting is his analysis of Yemen through the lens of the broader tension between the US and China. Most important, however, for US global strategies will be the massive gain of control...

The Somali pirates have once again warned that they could kill the crew of the Chinese flagged merchant vessel De Xin Hai if a military action is launched to rescue them. Speaking from the ship by phone, a pirate cautioned, “We know [the Chinese] have arrayed their warships in Somalia waters to attack us… We are telling them not to gamble with the lives of the Chinese teenagers in our hands. Honestly, we will kill if we are attacked" (Shanghaidaily.com, December 1). Chinese Missile Frigate Zhoushan docks in Zhejiang province after returning from the Gulf of Aden De Xin Hai...

Apparently unsuccessful in marketing it for anti-piracy operations, Xe has put its 183-foot ship McArthur up for sale. In an online advertisement on the Web site Yachtworld.com, the McArthur is listed at a reduced price of $3.7 million. The vessel is docked in Alicante, Spain.

YEMEN'S navy is charging commercial vessels up to $US55,000 ($60,800) each to guarantee transit through the pirate-infested waters of the Gulf of Aden under a deal that has reaped about $US30 million over 18 months. The hiring of Yemeni military came as al-Qa'ida flourishes in the Arabian Peninsula nation, and was agreed without the apparent knowledge of Yemeni government officials or international anti-piracy military forces. at least one merchant ship a day, including some of the largest ship owners, are discreetly paying Yemen for military protection, Somali pirates have attacked more than 200 commercial ships and hijacked nearly 50 over...

SOFIA (Reuters) - Somali pirates hijacked a British-flagged vehicle carrier off the Somali coast late on Friday, the Bulgarian foreign ministry said. The Asian Glory was seized about 600 miles east of the Somali coast before it joined a convoy heading for the Gulf of Aden, ministry spokesman Dragovest Goranov said. Somali pirates have made tens of millions of dollars from seizing ships for ransom in the Gulf of Aden, linking Europe to Asia, and are also hunting far into the Indian Ocean to evade foreign navies sent to protect commercial shipping. The European Union's counter-piracy force, EU Navfor and...

Maritime authorities on Saturday said that Somali pirates seized an Indonesian chemical tanker with 24 crew in the Gulf of Aden. A spokesman for the East Africa Seafarers Assistance Program said the Singapore-flagged Pramoni was on its way to India when it was captured.

Somali pirates holding a Chinese cargo ship and its crew of 25 said Sunday they would release the vessel after collecting a ransom of 3.5 million dollars (2.2 million euros) later in the day. The bulk carrier Dexinhai, owned by Qingdao Ocean Shipping, was seized on October 18 northeast of the Seychelles as it was sailing to India from South Africa with a cargo of coal. It was subsequently taken to the Somali coast, between the pirate lairs of Harardere and Hobyo, where it laid at anchor with other captured vessels and negotiations on its fate began. "We have been...

Law: American heroes are arraigned for allegedly punching a terrorist in wartime. What happens to Tiger Woods isn't vital to our country's future. What happens to Matthew McCabe, Julio Huertas and Jonathan Keefe is. People are more likely to recognize the names of Tiger's alleged bimbo eruptions than the names of these three Navy SEALs we sent into battle. They are not household names in a nation consumed with Climate Gate, the public option and the antics of billionaire athletes. An administration consumed with apologies has said the architect of 9/11's massacre, Khalid Sheik Mohammed, must be given all the...

The Maersk Alabama, a U.S. flagged cargo vessel, is now a veteran of not one, but two attacks by Somali pirates. The first, back in April, although ending well (except from the perspective of the pirates), was a horrid ordeal. The crew, using kitchen knives [Correction: I have just been informed that it was pocket knives, rather than kitchen knives, that the crew used--my apologies for the mistake] as their weapons, staged a fighting retreat to a secure compartment. There, they endured terrible (and potentially fatal) conditions: for 13 hours, in 130° heat, without drinking water or ventilation, they waited...

Richard Phillips, the ship captain toasted as a hero after he was taken captive by Somali pirates, ignored repeated warnings last spring to keep his freighter at least 600 miles off the African coast because of the heightened risk of attack, some members of his crew now allege. Records obtained by The Associated Press show that maritime safety groups issued at least seven such warnings in the days before outlaws boarded the Maersk Alabama about 380 miles off the shore of Somalia. A piracy expert and the captain's second-in-command say Phillips had the prerogative to heed the warnings or not....