Piracy Situation Risk Assessment, June 2014, Issue 26 Highlights of the Past Month:
Last month has seen the similar pirate activities comparing to the month before. The main sources reported at least 5 suspicious events in Indian Ocean/Red Sea area, two serious incidents near Nigeria, one incident near Sierra Leone and one attempt near Togo. There were 13 robberies or attempts reported including a major cargo theft from a tanker in South China Sea region.
A Thai diesel oil tanker with 14 crew members en route from Singapore to Indonesia was hijacked. The diesel oil tanker had lost contact with its owner after departing Singapore on Tuesday 27 May. Pirates hijacked and stole the tanker’s oil cargo onboard and destroyed the communication equipment. The crew and vessel are safe. In April, pirates injured the captain and stole diesel fuel from another Thailand-owned tanker off the eastern coast of Malaysia.
Experts are warning on the continuing rise of piracy in south-east Asia that cannot simply be halted by ramping up patrols in the global piracy hot spot. They argue that five factors are of particular importance in shaping piracy in south-east Asia: "overfishing, lax maritime regulations, the existence of organized crime syndicates, the presence of radical politically motivated groups in the region, and widespread poverty." As many as eight armed attacks by pirates took place in the Strait of Malacca and around Singapore in the first three months of this year, compared with one such attack in the same period the year before, according to the Regional Cooperation Agreement on Combating Piracy and Armed Robbery against Ships in Asia. In April, armed pirates hijacked a Japanese oil tanker off the coast of Malaysia and stole about 3 million liters of diesel.
On 14 May, the Egyptian Army announced that it had seized 15 tons of explosive material from a town that straddles the Suez Canal. Five tons of the material was seized in a truck in Al Qantara East on the eastern bank of the canal, leading to a second seizure of 10 tons of the same material held in storage at an undisclosed location in Al Qantara West, on the opposite bank. In a short statement, the army said the truck was being driven by two men from the town of El-Arish, which borders the Gaza Strip at the eastern edge of the Sinai Peninsula. The army gave no further details.
Two Somalis, linked to Al Shabaab, are suspected of having carried out a suicide bombing at a restaurant in Djibouti on filled with Western military personnel on Saturday 24 May that killed three and wounded at least 15. Several members of European Union naval and civilian maritime security missions were among those wounded in the attack, including three members of the Spanish military airforce.
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