Somali Pirates Hijack North Korean-flagged Ship

By Abdulaziz Billow Ali

Somali pirates have once again struck, this time hijacking a North Korean cargo ship on Wednesday with an unknown number of crew on board, the European Union Naval Force said. The 4,800-ton ship is owned by Libya’s White Sea Shipping and it is not clear how many crew members were on board or where they came from. The attack comes two days after pirates released a Greek-owned vessel and its crew months after hijacking it off Somalia.

Commander Anders Kallin of the EU Naval Force said that MV Rim was seized outside the patrol base of the EU Naval Force. The Horn of Africa nation is the perfect breeding ground for pirate’s base because the U.N.-backed transitional federal government is too busy fighting two Islamist insurgent groups to patrol its shores or go after pirates on land. The presence of warships from the European Union, the United States, China, Japan, Russia, India and other nations has reduced the number of attacks on merchant and leisure ships in the Gulf of Aden.

As many as 30 ships are patrolling the gulf at any one given time, naval officials said, and patrol missions was not being reduced over the holidays. Due to the tight security conducted by the western naval forces the pirates have resulted to moving to the Eastern and southern coast as of Somalia where patrol are virtually non existence. The Gulf of Aden, off the northern coast of Somalia, has the highest risk of piracy in the world. About 25,000 ships use the channel south of Yemen, between the Red Sea and the Arabian Sea.