Sea Pirates Rampage Along Somali Coast on New Year's Day

Five different pirate attacks and one sea-jacking incident are recorded by EcoTerra on the first day of the year.

The crew of the French Naval frigate Premier Maitre L'Her captured 8 pirates while foiling an attack on the S. Venus Courtesy: ouest-france.fr

(SALEM, Ore.) - The group Ecoterra reports that Somali pirates managed to sea-jack one vessel on the first day of the new year, and also attack two others. They sea-jacking occurred when pirates raided an Egyptian owned cargo ship with 28 Egyptian crew members near the coast of Somalia, the Egyptian foreign ministry confirmed.

The vessel that was attacked in this incident is the MV Blue Star. She was flying the flag of Saint Kitts and Nevis.

About 15 pirates, some heavily-armed, attacked this vessel near Bab al-Mandab as it was headed east, said Ahmed Rizk, assistant to Egypt's Foreign Minister, in a press statement. The ship was carrying 6,000 tons of fertilizer.

"The crew are hostages...," Rizq said, adding that Egyptian officials have contacted European authorities about the case and efforts are under way with "international and regional parties" to get the ship and crew released.

Ambassador Rizk said the sea-jacked ship is currently en route to an unknown destination on the coast of Somalia.

French Pirate Fighters

French military commanders say one of their warships foiled a raid in the Gulf of Aden New Year's day.

Somali pirates reportedly targeted a cargo ship in this event. Eight of the pirates were taken into custody, France confirmed Thursday.

The French Naval frigate Premier Maitre L'Her, was patrolling the waters as part of a European Union taskforce, when it intercepted the would-be pirates.

It was the French vessel's second response to a distress call from the Panamanian-flagged S. Venus.

On the first occasion, the pirates fled the area, navy captain Christophe Prazuck, spokesman for France's general staff told AFP.

The next time the distress call went out, the French frigate's crew spotted two light vessels near the cargo ship.

The crew of the cargo ship S. Venus identified the the pirates' assault craft, Prazuck added.

After the pirate boats were intercepted by the French vessel, six AK47 assault rifles, a rocket-launcher and rockets were confiscated, as well as a grappling hook and two boarding ladders.

The pirates will not be tried by French authorities. Instead they were taken back to the Somali coast to be handed them over to "the authorities," Prazuck said.

Gulf of Aden Attacks

Two further attacks occurred in the Gulf of Aden New Year's day.

One of the raids actually consisted of three consecutive attacks by first 3 skiffs than by a pirate mother-ship and then by 2 skiffs over a period of two hours. That began at 7:55 AM local time.

Around 12:30 PM, a single skiff with 4 armed men tried to approach a merchant vessel. In both cases no shots were fired and the pirates aborted the attacks.

A handout photo taken by the Royal Malaysian Navy and released by the Kuala Lumpur-based International Maritime Bureau on January 1st 2009, shows the Indian vessel MT Abul Kalam Azad.

Along with an attack on the Indian Mt Abul Kalam Azad with 40 crew on board, there were five separate reported pirate attacks on New Year's day.

Fortunately there were no injuries to the tanker crew as Malaysians intervened in another vessel, but the tanker sustained some damage, Noel Choong of the International Maritime Bureau's piracy reporting centre said.

He added that if the Malaysians hadn't arrived the tanker "would have been certainly hijacked."

EcoTerra says that counting the latest captures and releases, there are now at least 18 foreign vessels with a total of at least 350 crew members held in Somali waters.

They are monitored by EcoTerra, which maintains a case-list of the various incidents, while several other cases of ships, which were observed off the coast of Somalia and have been reported or had reportedly disappeared without trace or information, are still being followed.

More than 134 incidences (including attempted attacks, averted attacks and successful sea-jackings) have been recorded for 2008 with 49 fully documented, factual sea-jacking cases.

Five Attacks and One Sea-Jacking

The group says there are two mystery pirate mother-vessels; captured fishing vessels, the Athena/Arena and Burum Ocean, as well as less documented cases of absconded vessels are not listed in the hi-jack count until clarification.

The fate of several other vessels is unclear, sadly.

EcoTerra keeps a ten year list of piracy related incidents, "though in some cases it is presumed that they sunk due to bad weather or being unfit to sail.

In the last four years, 22 missing ships have been traced back with different names, flags and superstructures."

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Tim King is a former U.S. Marine with twenty years of experience on the west coast as a television news producer, photojournalist, reporter and assignment editor. In addition to his role as a war correspondent, this Los Angeles native serves as Salem-News.com's Executive News Editor. Tim spent the winter of 2006/07 covering the war in Afghanistan, embedded with the Oregon Guard's 41st Brigade Combat Team. Tim spent several weeks in Iraq over the summer of 2008, covering the war there while embedded with the Oregon Guard 2/641 aviation unit. Tim has received several awards for news reporting and photography including the Oregon AP Award for Spot News Photographer of the Year (2004), the first place Electronic Media Award in Spot News, Las Vegas, (1998), Oregon AP Cooperation Award (1991); and several others. Serving Oregon in very real terms, Salem-News.com is the nation's only truly independent high traffic news Website, affiliated with Google News and several other major search engines and news aggregators.
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