The intent of this blog is to heighten awareness of the threat of international terrorism taking on the role of modern-day pirates to hijack ships carrying liquefied natural gas or other dangerous substances in order to use them as weapons of mass destruction, through the promotion of the upcoming major motion picture, Hunt of the Sea Wolves.
MSN News
Seafarers have reported a surge in attacks by armed pirates in a South China Sea shipping lane, an international maritime watchdog said Thursday.
Noel Choong, head of the International Maritime Bureau (IMB) Piracy Reporting Centre, said there had been eight attacks off Indonesia’s Mangkai island in the past two weeks.
AFP
Japanese, EU and NATO forces cooperated on Sunday to intercept pirates who were preparing to attack ships in the Gulf of Aden, the NATO counter-piracy task force said. A Japanese Maritime Self Defence (JMSDF) aircraft spotted a pirate skiff with seven suspected pirates on board and alerted a helicopter from the Danish warship Esbern Snare under NATO command, which intercepted the skiff. “Subsequently the suspected pirates threw their weapons overboard and surrendered,” a NATO statement, released in London, said. An Italian helicopter from another vessel under NATO command provided support for the operation. Crew members from an American warship, the USS Kauffman, also in NATO’s counter-piracy operation, boarded the skiff and found a ladder pirates used to board ships “and other pirate-related paraphernalia,” the statement added.
Macau Daily Times
Philippine police said yesterday they had captured two members of the Al Qaeda-linked Abu Sayyaf group wanted for high-profile kidnappings and a deadly ambush that killed 14 soldiers.
Jamiri Hashi and Adjik Halik were caught on Wednesday in Zamboanga, a port city in the restive southern Mindanao region where the militants operate, regional police commander Chief Superintendent Angelo Sunglao said.
The government had offered a 13,000 dollar bounty for the capture of Jamiri, who is among those sought for the ambush of 14 marines by Abu Sayyaf on the nearby island of Basilan in July 2007. The militant group mutilated and beheaded the soldiers.
“Jamiri is facing a string of charges for multiple murder,” Sunglao said.Halik was wanted for taking part in the kidnapping of 21 mostly European hostages in an Abu Sayyaf cross-border raid into a dive resort off Sabah in 2001.
All of the hostages were later freed in batches after several months following alleged ransom payments.
Both men are scheduled to be flown to a jail in Manila, where they will be tried, Sunglao said.The Abu Sayyaf is a small gang of self-styled Islamic militants blamed for the country’s worst terrorist attacks, including the bombing of a passenger ferry that killed more than 100 people in Manila Bay in 2004.
Inquirer
Zamboanga del Sur fishermen are urging the authorities to solve the problem of pirate attacks in Illana Bay.
The fishermen are also asking the Fishery Law Enforcement Team of the Illana Bay Alliance in Western Mindanao to reactivate a Navy sub-station in Pagadian City.
Ramon Abella, a representative of the fishermen, told reporters Thursday the pirate attacks had increased to an alarming rate lately and that the fishermen had formally asked the authorities, particularly the Fishery law Enforcement Team, to take action.Abella said since March, 15 fishermen had died from pirate attacks on Illana Bay, particularly in the areas near Dinas town.Illana is a major fishing area off Pagadian City and the towns of Tukuran, Tabina, Labangan, Dumalinao, San Pablo, Dinas and Diamataling.
The Philippine Coast Guard has confirmed the fatality figure.Read entire story at Inquirer
Inquirer
Three policemen were hurt in a clash with suspected members of the Abu Sayyaf Group in Indanan, Sulu Monday afternoon, a police report revealed Wednesday.
Reports reaching Camp Crame said the members of the Sulu police, including provincial chief Senior Superintendent Joseph Ramac, shot it out with an undetermined number of the terror group in Barangay (village) Ajid at around 3 p.m. Monday.
They were on the way back to their police camp.Wounded in the attack were members of the elite Special Action Force unit identified only as Police Officer 2 De Vera, and PO1s Ratilla and Medinella.
The report said it was unclear if there were casualties among the Abu Sayyaf.The wounded policemen have been rushed to the Sulu General Hospital.The police had just come from visiting the villages of Likbah and Paiksan, whose residents were harassed by armed men last August 15.
The Norfolk-based USS San Jacinto is on an anti-piracy mission in the Gulf of Aden, which is a corridor much of the world’s trade.
CTF-151, a coalition anti-piracy effort, is working to fend off pirate attacks in an area where hundreds of attacks are carried out each year.
Capt. John Cordle, commanding officer, USS San Jacinto, tracked down a boat of suspected pirates believed to have tried to board a merchant ship.
“As soon as they saw us, they started chucking their weapons overboard, weapons and paraphenalia. 20-30 minutes into the chase, we got permission for warning shots. About the eight time they did that, he just stopped and threw his hands up,” he said.
Gitte Lillelund Bech, the Danish minister of defence, has revealed that Danish soldiers could soon be heading to the African east and west coasts to help prevent the development of more piracy, as has been an issue in Somalia.
The navy’s warships have over the past two years been involved in the hunt for Somali pirates off the coast of Africa, but Bech at the weekend said that this is not a long term solution, and that there needs to be taken steps to prevent piracy in other countries.
She wants Danish soldiers in Africa to set up coast guards, and to help African nations implement fishing controls, as it is believed that most Somali pirates were originally fishermen who turned to piracy after other nations emptied the Somali waters of fish.
Gunmen robbed four commercial ships anchored near the southern oil hub of Basra in a rare attack off the Iraqi coast, the U.S. Navy said Sunday.
Two men armed with AK-47 rifles boarded the American ship Sagamore in the vicinity of an Iraqi oil terminal in the northern Persian Gulf at 4 a.m. on Aug. 8, taking computers, cell phones and money from crew members before fleeing the vessel after about 40 minutes on board, according to Lt. John Fage, a spokesman for the Navy’s Fifth Fleet in Bahrain.
He said three other ships — the Antigua-flagged Armenia, the North Korean Crystal Wave and the Syrian Sana Star — were also robbed under similar circumstances during a two-hour period starting about 2 a.m. the same day.
Fage said he had no other information about the attackers or their nationalities.
Salah Aboud, head of the country’s ports agency, said two Iraqis were arrested after Iraqi naval forces found a boat holding some of the stolen materials during a search of a nearby area.
The seaborne robbery occurred about 20 miles (32 kilometers) off the port of Umm Qasr in an area patrolled jointly by the U.S. Navy and Iraqi sailors. American vessels in the area for routine security operations, including a guided missile destroyer, responded to the attacks, Fage said.
The attack reflects concerns about an increase in crime in Iraq even as political violence ebbs, but Fage played down concerns it signaled a new threat to commercial traffic in the Gulf.
On July 28, a Japanese oil tanker elsewhere in the Gulf was damaged and one crew member was injured in what the United Arab Emirates said was a suicide bombing.
Telegraph Seven pirates armed with machine guns boarded a cargo ship off the coast of Nigeria and took two senior crew members hostage.
After a few hours, the crew members, seven from Russia and three from Ghana, emerged to find the pirates had gone, taking the ship captain and the chief officer with them.
The kidnapped crew of a UAE-owned ship hijacked by Somali pirates is pleading for humanitarian intervention as negotiations for their release enter a fifth month.While none faces serious health problems, the 24 sailors are short of food and water, according to Ecoterra International, a Kenya-based non-governmental organisation that monitors piracy. They are also running out of diesel to power the generators aboard the MV Iceberg I, which belongs to the Azal Shipping company based in Dubai.
The vessel, which was carrying generators, transformers and empty fuel tanks, is anchored off the coast of Somalia and guarded by 50 pirates.
The crew members are from Yemen, India, Ghana, Sudan, Pakistan and the Philippines.