- One-year anniversary of High Risk Area reduction on Thursday 1 December 2016
- Increased risk of attack in Indian Ocean caused by political instability in Somalia and Yemen
- Recent attack on chemical tanker CPO Korea by pirates shows threat remains to vessels
Recent attacks on vessels passing through the Indian Ocean and Red Sea show that threats remain to commercial shipping in the area, a leading maritime risk management company has said today.
Thursday 1 December 2016 will mark the one-year anniversary since the reduction of the High Risk Area (HRA) in the western Indian Ocean, but recent incidents have shown that criminal activity in this historically dangerous shipping route is far from over, MAST has warned.
This comes at the same time as NATO’s recent announcement that its counter piracy mission in the Indian Ocean is to end, with those naval resources being shifted to the Black Sea and Mediterranean.
Gerry Northwood OBE, COO of MAST and a former Royal Navy counter piracy commander, and the lead planner in EUNAVFOR when the Indian Ocean HRA was originally created, believes that recent events support the argument that criminality – pirates and terrorists – is still occurring in the area and vessels which relax their security procedures could be targeted.
Recent incidents include:
- An attack on a chemical tanker 300 miles off Somalia, recently classified as a pirate attack;
- An attempted attack on an LNG tanker in the Bab-el-Mandab strait;
- Missile attacks on a UAE supply vessel and U.S. Navy warships off the coast of Yemen by Houthi rebels.
This succession of incidents is evidence that the generally unstable situation in both Somalia and Yemen is spilling over into the maritime environment. Consequently, commercial and private shipping, and seafarers could be under threat yet again.
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