Monday - April 21, 2008

Your Weekly Arrgh, Pirates!

Here’s today’s news on the latest misadventures on the high seas. Once again TWICE again we’ve got pirates attacking ships off the coast of Somalia. One got away, one didn’t. I think I might have to make this a regular column; it seems we’ve got something here every single week. I think it might be time to involve the UN. Because you know how amazingly effective they are at solving international crises and bringing the weight of the free world to bear against rogue states and semi-organized groups of thugs. Sure, maybe I’ll live that long, right? In the meantime, this looks like a situation that could be cured by good old fashioned naval gunfire. Sink their ships, raze their villages, drumhead trials for any pirates captured, then hang them. Enough already. A huge amount of the world’s wealth sails past the coast of Somalia and the Gulf of Aden. And every country with a navy has ships in the area. It’s time for some multi-national cooperation and some pirate stomping. Arrgh.

An unidentified ship fired on a Japanese oil tanker Monday off the eastern coast of Yemen, leaving a hole from which hundreds of gallons of fuel leaked, the ship’s operator said. No one was injured. The 150,000-ton tanker Takayama was attacked about 270 miles off the coast of Aden in southwestern Yemen while it was heading for Saudi Arabia, its Japanese operator, Nippon Yusen K.K., said in a statement. None of its 23 crew members _ seven Japanese and 16 Filipinos _ was injured, the company said. The tanker had left the South Korean port of Ulsan on April 4. Nippon Yusen spokeswoman Yuko Tsutsui said the attack left a 1-inch hole in the tanker’s stern which was temporarily patched after hundreds of gallons of fuel leaked. She said the tanker was heading to Aden for repairs, and its itinerary could change depending on the extent of the damage.

Yukio Yamashita, a Transport Ministry official in charge of crisis management, said the area is considered prone to pirate attacks. He said the unknown attacker had left the scene.

Kyodo News agency said the tanker was hit by a rocket fired from a small boat.
...

“We heard one big boom at first and then we were chased by the group for about an hour,” a crew member told Japanese public broadcaster NHK. “We were attacked on the left and the right sides of the ship at least four times.”

The attack occurred in international waters some 440 kilometres (275 miles) east of the Yemeni port of Aden, Japanese officials said.

“We have received information that the tanker was attacked by a small pirate ship with weapons like rocket launchers,” chief Japanese government spokesman Nobutaka Machimura told reporters.
...
The ship suffered small punctures and leaked a small amount of oil, said Shousuke Hamada, who manages the ship’s operations.

“The tanker felt a big boom at around 4:40am as it was attacked by some kind of firearms. After that, it was attacked on the portside and starboard, about twice on each side, while it made a zigzag escape,” Hamada told a news conference.

MADRID, Spain - Officials say a Spanish fishing boat with a crew of 26 has been hijacked off the coast of Somalia.  The Foreign Ministry says there are no reports of injuries in the seizure Sunday.  The ministry says in a statement issued Sunday night that a Spanish military vessel that was in the general area has been ordered to head toward the scene of the hijacking.

So we’ve got two attacks, and it’s only Monday. What if that rocket had actually gone off? (I’m guessing it was a dud. A 1” hole is not much damage, almost small enough to be caused by plain old bullets. But if the “rocket” (was this an RPG we’re talking about?) had exploded, then it’s likely this small tanker would have gone down in flames.) Is that what’s it’s going to take to focus enough attention on this plague to demand a solution?

Ok, THIS might be enough to get the powers-that-be to pay some attention:

this morning the 150,000-ton tanker Takayama was attacked about 270 miles off the east coast of Yemen while it was heading for Saudi Arabia causing oil to spike to a record $117.40 a barrel.

Posted by Drew458     on 04/21/2008 at 10:35 AM   
Filed Under: • Pirates, aarrgh! •  
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