More on Pirates

Seems this has been a busy week in and around the waters of Somalia. Eight ships have been hijacked this week alone. Since the beginning of the year there have been a total of 39 ships taken. You can read a story from USA Today about it here.

The story reports that:

17 vessels remain in the hands of pirates along with more than 300 crewmembers, including a Ukrainian ship loaded with weapons and the Saudi supertanker carrying $100 million in crude.

I have to say again this seems like a strange story. Hard to believe in this day and age that this is going on.

The Indian navy scored a victory by destroying a pirate mother ship:

A patrolling Indian navy frigate quickly identified the vessel as a "mother ship" _ a mobile attack base used to take gangs of pirates and smaller speedboats into deep water _ and ordered it to stop and be searched.

By the time the battle was over, the mother ship had sunk _ the Indian gunfire sparked fires and a series of onboard blasts, possibly due to exploding ammunition _ and the speedboats were racing into the darkness.

As several American navy spokes people have said this is a very large area. Naval ships of whatever country can't be everywhere at once. The problem is in all likelihood going to continue until conditions in Somalia improve. However, Somalia's been in turmoil since the 1990s so it looks like this problem is not going to be going away anytime soon.