Somali pirates captured two Yemeni fishing boats and 22 Yemeni fishermen Wednesday in the Gulf of Aden, Yemen’s official news agency SABA said.
SABA, citing sources in Yemen’s Coast Guard, said seven other fishermen escaped on a small boat prior to the pirates’ taking control of the fishing boats.
The news agency also said that, after hijacking a different Yemeni ship last month and demanding $2 million ransom, Somali pirates freed the cargo ship and its crew without receiving ransom after local clan elders and officials pleaded with them to do so.
On Tuesday, the German cruise liner MS Columbus said it would fly its 246 passengers and most of its crew over the Gulf of Aden instead of through it to avoid any pirate attack.
The number of attacks off Somalia has shot up this year, with pirates staging increasingly bolder attacks on ever-bigger targets.
So far this year, pirates have attacked almost 100 vessels off Somalia’s coast and successfully hijacked nearly 40, according to the International Maritime Bureau.
How is this still going on? They’re practically in row boats w/ an outboard motor. The gov’ts can’t put a stop to this?
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When you are poor and you have few opportunities. What else are you going to do? Plus the fact that that coast has been a pirate haven since the beginning of global sea trade.
But now they’re making the nightly news every day. You’d think the various gov’ts would put a stop to it, simply because they shouldn’t be pwn’d by 6 guys in a dingy.
I say good for them. If Canadian fishers had the balls to take up piracy when the invasive French starting bogarting our fish, they wouldn’t have been able to obliterate that industry and ruin a major chain in the ocean cycle here, which is still having debilitating consequences. Damn you selfish French bastards, damn you all to hell.
Puulaahi’s right. This has been going on around the coast of Somalia for quite a while, now.
As for how it’s happening, it’s all quite simple, really. Get a small dingy full of armed guys hard up for some cash and the feeling of being a badass, and in the dark of the night, climb aboard a boat full of mostly unarmed sailors or tourists on a cruise ship.
As for WHY it’s still happening, really, I have no idea. It would be way too simple to stage an easy trap for these guys, like hiding a bunch of armed sailors on one of these regular tankers or cruise liners, lure them in, etc.
Or you could just go conventional on them and have a small fleet blow them out of the water.
‘Zactly! It can’t be that hard to catch people when you know where they’ll be. Are people being held hostage or just the ships and cargo?