Pirates seize Saudi tanker off Kenya

Boy are these guys getting Brave , what is going to be the last straw before someone just shoots these nimrods out of the water or sinks a ship they seize?
A bunch of tanks and ammo did not do it , about 200 Captive crew members from various ships have not done it , so what is it going to take?And when it does happen , what kind of a response are we going to see?

International Herald Tribune

JIDDA, Saudi Arabia: Pirates captured a Saudi-owned supertanker loaded with more than $100 million worth of crude oil off the coast of Kenya, seizing the largest ship ever hijacked, United States Navy officials said Monday.

The hijacking follows a string of increasingly brazen attacks by Somali pirates in recent months, but this appears to be the first time that pirates have seized a full oil tanker.

"This is unprecedented," Lieutenant Nathan Christensen, a spokesman for the Fifth Fleet, told Reuters. "It's the largest ship that we've seen pirated. It's three times the size of an aircraft carrier."

....

The attack took place despite an increased multinational naval presence off the Somali coast, where most of the recent hijackings have taken place. The pirates are generally heavily armed, and travel in speedboats equipped with satellite phones and GPS equipment.

Piracy has increased sharply this year, with more than 80 ships attacked so far off the Somali coast, 36 of them successfully hijacked, according to the International Maritime Bureau, a piracy watchdog agency based in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Among those hijacked, 14 ships with a total of more than 200 crew members are still being held.

The supertanker, the Sirius Star, was hijacked more than 450 nautical miles southeast of Mombasa, Kenya, Navy officials said. That is far to the south of most recent attacks, suggesting that the pirates may be expanding their range in an effort to avoid the multinational naval patrols now plying the Gulf of Aden and the Arabian Sea.

"I'm stunned by the range of it," said Admiral Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, at a news conference in Washington. The ship's distance from the coast was "the longest distance I've seen for any of these incidents," he said.

The 1,080-foot ship was carrying two million barrels of oil, according to its owner, Vela International, a subsidiary of the Saudi Arabia-based oil giant Saudi Aramco. Its 25-member crew includes citizens of Croatia, Britain, the Philippines, Poland, and Saudi Arabia, the United States Navy said.

Few details were available about how and when the attack took place. But Vela released a statement saying the crew appeared to be safe.

Piracy gained a new level of international attention in September, when a Ukrainian freighter packed with tanks, antiaircraft guns and other heavy weapons was captured. That freighter is still under pirate control.

Warships from the United States, Russia, NATO, India and the European Union soon began steaming toward Somalia's waters. Aircraft now crisscross the skies on reconnaissance missions. They appear to have had some success: the percentage of successful pirate attacks dropped to 31 percent in October from 53 percent in August, according to the United States Navy.

But the pirates have proved resilient. There have been several attacks in the past week alone. On Tuesday, several people were killed when British sailors battled pirates to thwart an attack on a Danish shipping vessel, United States Navy officials said.

The pirates have several advantages. Their hunting grounds, from the Gulf of Aden to the Kenyan coast, comprise more than a million square miles. To be safe, merchant ships must stay in a narrow corridor identified by naval authorities. Out of 15 recent pirate attacks, 10 took place outside those corridors, naval officials said.

Most ships do not have heavy security, while the pirates are fast and well armed. The ransom payments have been rising. Only a few years ago the average ransom was in the tens to hundreds of thousands of dollars. In 2008 they have mostly ranged from $500,000 to $2 million.

The pirates' profits are set to reach a record $50 million in 2008, Somali officials say. Shipping firms are usually prepared to pay, because the sums are still low compared with the value of the ships.