By Ellen Knickmeyer
Washington Post Foreign Service
Saturday, September 27, 2008; A01
ABOARD A YEMENI COAST GUARD VESSEL -- Somali pirates plying the Gulf of Aden in speedboats equipped with grenade launchers and scaling ladders have launched what the maritime industry calls the biggest surge of piracy in modern times, sending shipping costs soaring and the world's navies scrambling to protect the main water route from Asia and the Middle East to Europe.
Pirates from the failed African state of Somalia have attacked at least 61 ships in and around the Gulf of Aden this year, 17 of them in the first two weeks of September alone, according to the International Maritime Bureau's Piracy Reporting Center in Malaysia. That compares with 13 attacks in the area for all of 2007.
"In my time here, I must say, this is the most concentrated period of destabilizing activity I have seen in the Gulf of Aden," said British Commodore Keith Winstanley, deputy commander of the Combined Maritime Forces, whose members have confronted the pirates repeatedly since mid-August. The coalition, headquartered in Bahrain, includes the militaries of the United States and 19 other nations.
The latest hijackings include the capture off Somalia on Thursday of a Ukrainian cargo vessel with 33 Russian-made T-72 tanks aboard, as well as ammunition. As of Friday, the Somali pirates were holding 14 oil tankers, cargo vessels and other ships with a total of more than 300 crew members, demanding ransoms of $1 million or more per ship.
