Somali pirates seize two more vessels - yearly total up to 55

Easy money, so the number of pirates and attacks is up. A Greek vessel was seized Thursday and a Hong Kong based vessel was taken Wednesday. More details here:

According to the IMB, 55 ships have been attacked off Somalia since January and 11 are still being held for ransom when news of the Great Creation’s capture was reported.

This week, French commandos freed a couple who were held hostage on their yacht in the region and French President Nicolas Sarkozy called for an international offensive against piracy.

Last year, the pirates had been operating on Somalia’s east coast, but then shifted to the north, in the Gulf of Aden, before again recently switching back to the Indian Ocean.

Somalia’s long coastline is infested with pirates, making the Gulf of Aden and neighbouring areas in the Indian Ocean among the most dangerous waters in the world.

In recent months, a Djibouti-based multinational taskforce has been patrolling the Gulf of Aden and the Red Sea, where a pirate mothership is believed to be operating.

Mwangura of the Seafarers Assistance programme said the latest attack was evidence that pirates could play cat and mouse with foreign navies. “They are changing locations due to the heavy concentration of navy ships” near the Gulf of Aden, he told AFP.

Operating from wooden boats that are difficult to detect on radar, the heavily-armed former coast guards turned pirates flit along with ease.

“At times when the sea is rough, they are camouflaged by the waves,” Simon Tousignant, the second-lieutenant of the Canadian frigate Ville de Quebec, told AFP on board the ship.

The Ville de Quebec has been escorting UN relief food from the Kenyan port of Mombasa to the war-riven Somali capital of Mogadishu since Tuesday.

The sea bandits, whose numbers Mwangura says have risen to about 1,000 elude capture due to their rapid and unpredictable attacks.

Sky News is reporting that the multinational naval force patrolling the region is advising vessels to stay at least 250 miles off the coast and even then to be vigilant.

EagleSpeak, a blog written by an attorney and former Navy Reserve Captain, whom we have linked to regarding Somalia piracy before, has also picked up the story and is a great resource if you want to learn a lot more about the dangerous waters around Somalia. He links to an article in the Somali Press Review that outlines the attractiveness of this criminal activity for the warlords of Somalia:

The money skillfully generated from piracy has flooded Somali warlord coffers having tremendously altered the market economy of the Horn of Africa. With bride price paid in U.S. dollars, young women wedding pirates have a lot to display in their jewelry boxes. They get anything their eyes covet: gold bought in Dubai, diamond polished in Paris, Lapus Lazuli mined in the mountains of chaotic Afghanistan, brightly colored Saris tailored in India, shoes crafted in Italy, Japanese cars, mansions, electric generators, Arabian sofa, Syrian drapes, DVD and CD players, and assortment of goods in the world’s most beleaguered, impoverished, and war ravaged region.