'High-risk areas for hijacking'

2005-06-08 22:22

Nairobi - The International Maritime Board (IMB) has boosted its piracy warning for the coast of lawless Somalia after two recent violent attacks, including one this week in which a United States naval destroyer intervened.

The board, a division of the International Chamber of Commerce, said the new attacks, the fourth and fifth off the Somali coast in three months, underscored the danger to mariners in the area and renewed a warning for transiting vessels to avoid the region.

"The eastern and northeastern coasts of Somalia continue to be high-risk areas for hijackings," it said in its weekly piracy report issued on Tuesday.

"Ships not making scheduled calls to ports in these areas should stay away from the coast," it said, noting that all five incidents since March 31 had involved armed pirates who, in at least two cases, took crews hostage.

Surge in piracy

Both the IMB and the US, which issues its own maritime threat assessments, warned of a surge in piracy in Somali waters in April after the first three attacks.

They have repeated those alerts regularly but not until this week had either mentioned new attacks.

The last reported attack took place on Monday in waters off the Somalia capital of Mogadishu in which three gunmen in a white speedboat opened fire on an unidentified bulk carrier with automatic weapons, the IMB said.

The USS Gonzalez, a US naval ship in the area, responded to the vessel's distress call, came close, fired flares and escorted the carrier further out to sea, it said.

There were "no injuries to crew but gunfire by pirates caused 10 bullet holes on the starboard side near the bridge", the IMB said in its brief description of the incident.

The second most recent and possibly more serious attack took place off Somalia's eastern coast on May 22 when pirates boarded and hijacked a cargo ship, beating up 21 crewmembers, locking them in a room and demanding a ransom for their release, it said.

"Further news is awaited" on that incident, the IMB said.

An earlier hostage crisis involving a ship hijacked in April was resolved last month, reportedly as a US naval ship observed.

- AFP