Somalian Pirates Back To Sea

We mentioned on Saturday to expect the pirate activity to pick up quickly, as they usually do after ransoms are paid. Be wary of speedboats if your in the Gulf of Aden. There were two new incidents on Monday, and it looks like the Italian Navy assisted in the first incident.

The Italian Navy appears to have prevented another pirate attack on commercial shipping in the Gulf of Aden over the weekend, after the 2004-built, 32,300-dwt bulk carrier Africa Ibis called for help in warding off a group of five speedboats which were approaching the vessel.

The Italian ship was the ITS Commandante Borsini (P491). The second incident off Somalia involved a South Korean bulk carrier.

In another incident in the Gulf of Aden, off Somalia, a South Korean bulk carrier came under pirate attack on Monday at about 0940 GMT, he said.

Choong said pirates believed to be from Somalia attacked the ship for about 40 minutes with machine guns and rocket-propelled grenades.

"The ship was hit by a rocket and bullets," he said, adding that the captain took evasive measures "to prevent the 10 pirates in two speed boats from boarding," he said.

Choong said the ship was still sailing to its destination in Europe despite the damage suffered in the attack.

In observing the piracy off the Horn of Africa, it is pretty clear how little respect the pirates have for the presence of coalition forces. Given pirates are running around in speedboats with RPGs and Machine Guns, they also have a fairly sophisticated intelligence network too, because it is worth noting how often they attack 'close' to coalition ships, but never close enough to be hunted at sea until after they hijack a ship.

They will attack again over the next few days. One thing we are observing is the Somalia pirates appear to be going after larger ships lately. They haven't had success yet, but they are shooting up a number of large commercial ships on a weekly basis. Insurance rates will soon be going up, which means shipping costs will increase, which means we will soon be paying even more for the stuff we import. If the pirates strike at or even steal a tanker with fuel onboard, expect gas prices to jump big like they did when the pirates attacked the empty Japanese tanker.