Word: suez
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...world's worst humanitarian disasters, Islamic terrorism and rampant human trafficking have all failed to draw the world's interest to Somalia. The return of piracy to the high seas, however, has. The Somali pirates have attacked more than 100 vessels in the waters leading to and from the Suez Canal this year, and earned tens of millions of dollars in ransom. Today they are holding 17 ships with around 300 crew members off the Somali coast. And at a weekend security conference organized by the International Institute for Strategic Studies in Bahrain, headquarters to the U.S. Navy...
...dire has the piracy problem become that several international shipping companies have chosen to abandon the shortcut through the Suez Canal that requires their vessels to pass the Somali coast, and instead route them around South Africa. "As long as there is no firm deterrent, attacks will continue," said Noel Choong, chief of the International Maritime Bureau's Piracy Reporting Center in Kuala Lumpur. "The risks are low, and the returns are so high." And not only for the pirates, either...
...traveling there. Avoiding pirate waters is no easy task—it can cost ships five to 10 days of extra travel at $30,000 per day to go around Africa’s troubled waters or $200,000 to avoid them by paying Egypt for use of the Suez Canal. IMB’s Piracy Reporting Centre also concluded that worldwide attacks are becoming more violent, with 581 crewmembers held hostage as well as nine kidnappings and nine murders this year...
...Navy officials say the Sirius Star, whose maiden voyage was in March, had planned to avoid the Gulf of Aden altogether and sail around South Africa's Cape of Good Hope rather than through the Suez Canal Zone, as its owners wanted to avoid an encounter with the pirates. "That is the scary part," says Cyrus Mody, manager at the International Maritime Bureau. "What exactly are [the pirates] doing so far south? If they are thinking of expanding their sphere of operations to such great distance, it is going to become an absolutely humongous task to get this thing under...
Offshore, a growing flotilla of warships from the U.S., Russia, the European Union and India has been trying to keep Somali pirates from taking their pick of the 16,000 mainly cargo ships that pass through the Suez Canal annually. There are several gangs of pirates; armed with Kalashnikov rifles and traveling on small fishing boats and skiffs, they have attacked more than 80 ships and hijacked at least 30, collecting anywhere from $18 million to $30 million in ransom, according to the British strategic think tank Chatham House. Big paydays have made them progressively bolder: one gang is still...