somali pirate shooting cruise

Can You Shoot at Pirates on a Luxury Cruise Along the Somali Coast?

"the object of the cruise is to sail up and down the somali coast waiting to get hijacked by pirates.", snopes staff, published july 1, 2009.

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In the fall of 2008, the United Nations Security Council passed Resolution 1838, which called on nations with vessels in the waters near Somalia to apply military force to repress acts of piracy along that coastline. While pirates had been plying their trade in area since the early 1990s, the rate of such incidents had markedly increased by 2007 and 2008. Pirates either overrun ships and take their cargoes or they kidnap passengers to hold for ransom.

Attention was focused on this issue by two incidents that occurred in April 2009: six armed pirates in a speedboat attacked the Italian cruise ship Melody off the coast of Somalia (but were foiled when the Melody 's captain ordered his security crew to fire back), and Somali pirates seized the Maersk Alabama , a relief ship laden with supplies destined for Somalia, Uganda, and Kenya. The Maersk Alabama 's captain, Richard Phillips, was taken hostage; and when his life appeared in danger, U.S. Navy snipers killed three of the four pirates and effected his release. These successful defensive acts against Somali pirates were widely applauded by those who favor countering aggression with aggression over slowly negotiating for the release of hostages taken captive by pirates and then forking over hefty ransoms for their safe return.

This mood of hearty approval over those responses may have inspired a satirical piece about pirate-hunting cruises aboard luxury yachts plying the coast of Somalia, trolling for buccaneers to blast to smithereens:

THE ULTIMATE ADVENTURE CRUISE To The Point Cruise Line is excited to offer the ultimate adventure cruise along the pirate-infested coast of Somalia! We board our luxury cruise ship in Djibouti on the Gulf of Aden near the entrance to the Red Sea, and disembark in Mombassa, Kenya, seven adrenaline-charged days later. Starting at $5,200 per-person (double occupancy, inside room) and $6,900 (veranda complete with bench rest), you'll relax like never before. That's because you are welcome to bring your own arsenal with you. If you don't have your own weapons, you can rent them from our onboard Master Gunsmith. Enjoy reloading parties every afternoon with skeet and marksmanship competitions every night! But the best fun of all, of course, is Pirate Target Practice. For the object of the cruise is to sail up and down the Somali Coast waiting to get hijacked by pirates. The weapons rental costs are as follows. Rent a full auto M-16 for only $25/day with ammo attractively priced at $16 per 100 rounds of 5.56 armor-piercing: On a budget? Rent a full-auto scope-mounted AK-47 for only $9/day with 7.62 ball ammo at $12 per 100 rounds: Hello! Nothing gets a pirate's attention like a Barrett M-107 50-cal sniper rifle; only $59/day with 25 rounds of armor-piercing ammo affordably priced at only $29.95. Need a spotter? Our professional crew members can double as spotters for only $30/hour (spotting scope included, but gratuities are not.) Want to make a real impact? Rent an RPG for only $175/day with three fragmentation rounds included! Also included: Free complimentary night vision equipment - and throughout the night, coffee, pastries and snacks are always available on the main deck from 7pm until 6am. Our deluxe package comes complete with gourmet meals and all rooms offer a mini-bar. But that's not all! Twin mounted miniguns are available for rental at only $450.00 per 30 seconds of sustained fire! We guarantee that you will experience at least two hijacking attempts by pirates or you'll receive an instant $1,000 refund upon arrival in Mombassa. How can we make that guarantee? We operate at 5 knots just beyond 12 nautical miles off the coast of Somalia, thus in international waters where pirates have no rights whatever. In fact, we make three passes through the area's most treacherous waters to ensure maximum visibility by Somali "mother ships". We repeat this for five days, making three complete passes past the entire Somali Coast. At night, the boat is fully lit and bottle rockets are shot every five minutes with loud disco music directionally beamed shoreside to attract maximum attention. Testimonials from previous participants in the Somali Cruise: "Six attacks in 4 days were more than I expected. I bagged three pirates, my wife nailed two, and my 12-year old son sank two boats with the mini-gun. This wonderful cruise was fun for the whole family" — Fred D., Cincinnati , OH "Pirates 0, Passengers 32! Well worth the trip! Can't recommend it highly enough!" — Ben L., Bethesda , MD "I haven't had this much fun since flying choppers in ' Nam. Don't worry about getting shot by pirates... they never even got close to the ship with the crap they shoot and their lousy aim... reminds me of a drunken juicer door-gunner we picked up from the motor pool in Phu Bai!" — Dan J. - Denver , CO Come on board and bag your own clutch of genuine Somali pirates! But cabin space is limited so you need to respond quickly. Reserve your package before May 31st and get a great bonus - 100 rounds of free tracer ammo in the caliber of your choice. So sign up for the Ultimate Somali Coast Adventure Cruise now!   Luxury yachts offer pirate hunting cruises Luxury ocean liners in Russia are offering pirate hunting cruises aboard armed private yachts off the Somali coast. Wealthy hunters pay £3,500 per day to patrol the most dangerous waters in the world hoping to be attacked by raiders. When attacked, they retaliate with grenade launchers, machine guns and rocket launchers, reports Austrian business paper Wirtschaftsblatt. Passengers, who can pay an extra £5 a day for an AK-47 machine gun and £7 for 100 rounds of ammo, are also protected by a squad of ex special forces troops. The yachts travel from Djibouti in Somalia to Mombasa in Kenya. The ships deliberately cruise close to the coast at a speed of just five nautical miles in an attempt to attract the interest of pirates. "They are worse than the pirates," said Russian yachtsman Vladimir Mironov. "At least the pirates have the decency to take hostages, these people are just paying to commit murder," he continued.

That satirical item was a 7 May 2009 article written for, and posted to, the humor section of the web site To the Point News . The joke was subsequently picked up and reworked by another web site, Somali Cruises .

As an editor at the Cruise Critic web site observed of this improbable business scheme:

Common sense would likely tell most of us that the idea is ridiculously absurd. The last time we checked, killing people is illegal, and arming blood-thirsty, inexperienced cruise passengers with high-powered weapons is probably not a good idea. (It's also doubtful that John Doe would have much success filing a travel insurance claim after accidentally blowing off his own foot with an M-16.)

Nonetheless, after the Ananova online news site presented the Somali pirate cruise send-up as a factual item, several other news outlets and publications (including Canada's National Post newspaper) picked up the story and ran it as true, thereby fostering belief that the spoof "pirates cruises" were a real offering.

Ananova.   "Luxury Yachts Offer Pirate Hunting Cruises."     25 June 2009.

CNN.   "Italian Cruise Ship Thwarts Pirate Attack."     26 April 2009.

National Post.   "Armed Private Yachts Offering Pirate-Hunting Cruises Off Somalia."     25 June 2009.

Sunday Mercury.   "Crazy World."     28 June 2009   (p. 26).

By Snopes Staff

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6 Somali pirates nabbed in tanker hijack attempt off North African coast

S ix suspected pirates were captured after shooting at an oil tanker in the Gulf of Aden along the coastline of Somalia, according to officials, raising concerns about a rising number of piracy attacks in the region.

A European Union naval force nabbed the pirates after they opened fire at the Marshall Islands-flagged Chrystal Arctic in the body of water that connects the Red Sea and the Bab el-Mandeb Strait, a major shipping channel. The pirates exchanged fire with a security team onboard the Crystal Arctic before abandoning an attempt to hijack the tanker.

The pirates traveled in a small ship “carrying weapons and ladders,” said the British military’s Maritime Trade Operations center, which oversees Mideast shipping routes. The pirates were armed with Kalashnikov-style rifles and rocket-propelled grenades, according to private security firm Ambrey.

The tanker crew was unharmed, but the pirates sustained varied injuries, though it wasn’t clear if they were due to the shootout.

The incident comes as Yemen’s Iran-backed Houthi rebels have been attacking ships traveling through the waterway for months in an twisted show of support for Hamas’ war with Israel.

Piracy off Somalia’s coast was once rampant, but lessened in recent years after an international effort to patrol the shipping lanes near the country.

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Suspected pirate attack in the Gulf of Aden raises concerns about growing Somali piracy

A European naval force has detained six suspected pirates after they opened fire on an oil tanker traveling through the Gulf of Aden

JERUSALEM -- A European naval force detained six suspected pirates on Friday after they opened fire on an oil tanker traveling through the Gulf of Aden, officials said, likely part of a growing number of piracy attacks emanating from Somalia.

The attack on the Marshall Islands-flagged Chrystal Arctic comes as Yemen's Houthi rebels have also been attacking ships traveling through the crucial waterway, the Red Sea and the Bab el-Mandeb Strait connecting them. The assaults have slowed commercial traffic through the key maritime route onward to the Suez Canal and the Mediterranean Sea.

The pirates shot at the tanker from a small ship “carrying weapons and ladders,” according to the British military's United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations center, which oversees Mideast shipping routes. The pirates carried Kalashnikov-style rifles and rocket-propelled grenades, the private security firm Ambrey said.

The pirates opened fire first at the Chrystal Arctic, whose armed, onboard security team returned fire at them, the UKMTO said.

The pirates then abandoned their attempt to take the tanker, which continued on its way with all its crew safe, the UKMTO said. Dark black smoke came out of the small boat carrying the pirates, likely from a burning fuel drum, Ambrey said.

Hours later, the European Union naval force in the region known as Operation Atalanta said a frigate operating in the region detained six suspected pirates. The frigate seized the pirates given “the unsafe condition of their skiff” and said that some had “injuries of varied severity.”

It wasn't immediately clear if those injured suffered gunshot wounds from the exchange of fire with the Chrystal Arctic. The EU force declined to elaborate “due to the security of the operations.”

Ambrey identified the EU vessel as Italy's Carlo Bergamini-class frigate ITS Federico Martinego.

Once-rampant piracy off the Somali coast diminished after a peak in 2011. That year, there were 237 reported attacks in waters off Somalia. Somali piracy in the region at the time cost the world's economy some $7 billion — with $160 million paid out in ransoms, according to the Oceans Beyond Piracy monitoring group.

Increased naval patrols, a strengthening central government in Mogadishu, Somalia's capital, and other efforts saw the piracy beaten back.

However, concerns about new attacks have grown in recent months. In the first quarter of 2024, there have been five reported incidents off Somalia, according to the International Maritime Bureau.

“These incidents were attributed to Somali pirates who demonstrate mounting capabilities, targeting vessels at great distances, from the Somali coast,” the bureau warned in April. It added that there had been “several reported hijacked dhows and fishing vessels, which are ideal mother ships to launch attacks at distances from the Somali coastline.”

In March, the Indian navy detained dozens of pirates who seized a bulk carrier and took its 17 crew hostage. In April, pirates releases 23 crew members of the Bangladesh-flagged cargo carrier MV Abdullah after seizing the vessel. The terms of the release aren't immediately known.

These attacks come as the Houthi campaign targeting shipping since November as part of their pressure campaign to stop the Israel-Hamas war raging in the Gaza Strip.

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Trending topics, pirates who attacked merchant ship in gulf of aden were likely somali, says pentagon.

THE PENTAGON – An attack on a commercial shipping vessel, sailing under a Liberian flag but linked to an Israel businessman, was likely conducted by Somali pirates, the Pentagon press secretary told reporters Monday.

The crew of USS Mason (DDG-87) , which responded to the distress call put out by M/V Central Park , captured five people attempting to flee to Yemen after boarding the merchant tanker. Initial indications suggest the five people being held aboard Mason are Somali, Brig. Gen. Patrick Ryder told reporters.

Somali pirates are nothing new to the Gulf of Aden, retired Rear Adm. Tery McKnight told USNI News on Monday. The strip of water between the Horn of Africa and the Arabian Peninsula was plagued with Somali pirates in the 2000s, McKnight said.

Somali pirates have been known to take advantage of situations like the high tensions in the Middle East. But what is unusual is the two missiles fired from Houthi-controlled areas of Yemen about an hour and 40 minutes after Mason ’s crew boarded Central Park to help take back the ship, said McKnight, the first commander of the anti-piracy Combined Task Force 151.

“That is very odd. I mean, as far I know, that is the first time that’s happened,” McKnight said. ” “What’s interesting about the whole thing is how the Houthi’s knew that the Mason picked them up, and they were going after this particular vessel.”

Central Park was allegedly threatened on its way into the Red Sea prior to the attack, said Sal Mercogliano, a maritime professor at Campbell University. Now it was attacked on its way out, he said.

“It’s impossible to say that that’s a coincidence that Central Park was targeted by Yemen to come, to divert into their port, and then Central Park was hit again in the Gulf of Aden by Somali pirates,” Mercogliano said. “That level of coincidence is a bit too much for the volume of traffic coming through.”

Mercogliano said there are open questions surrounding this incident, including how the alleged Somali pirates knew Central Park was linked to an Israeli businessman. Companies tend to use liability shielding, which makes it harder to find who the owner is, he said.

While Somali pirates often attacked in the Gulf of Aden in the early 2000s and 2010s, piracy had died down in the area since 2017, Mercogliano said. It is unclear if the attack is the result of Somali pirates taking advantage of the situation in the Middle East.

“It raises a lot of questions in the fact that Central Park was the subject of not one but potentially two attacks,” Mercogliano said. “This is a vessel that has Israeli ownership associated with it. So it raises the question for me whether the Somali pirate attack was instigated and funded by some outside source.”

During the unrest in Somalia, people fled to Yemen, McKnight said. That raises the question of if the five alleged Somalians lived in Yemen.

Another question raised by McKnight and Mercogliano is what the U.S. will do with the five suspected pirates. The last time the U.S. prosecuted someone for piracy of a commercial ship was the Somali pirate who participated of the capture of Maersk Alabama in 2009, Mercogliano said.

Ryder also told reporters that there were three People’s Liberation Army Navy ships near the incident with Mason and Central Park but did not render assistance, which came as no surprise to Mercogliano or McKnight.

China has long had an anti-piracy fleet in the Middle East waters as part of its protection of its own merchant ships. But unlike the U.S. and members of the anti-piracy coalition Task Force 151, the Chinese ships do not engage with pirates unless they are attacking a Chinese ship, McKnight said.

The only question about the Chinese presence is if they were told not to interfere, Mercogliano said, noting that the Chinese do sometimes work with other forces.

Heather Mongilio

Heather Mongilio is a reporter with USNI News. She has a master’s degree in science journalism and has covered local courts, crime, health, military affairs and the Naval Academy. Follow @hmongilio

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Cruise ship to evacuate passengers in case of Somali pirate attack

German cruise ship sailing past Somali coast will evacuate passengers and fly them to next port to protect them from possible pirate attack

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A German cruise ship plans to evacuate passengers in Yemen and fly them to the next port of call Wednesday to avoid any possible encounters with pirates off the coast of lawless Somalia.

Several other cruise operators said Tuesday they were also shifting or canceling tours that would have taken clients past Somalia, as nations and companies around the world debated how to confront the piracy dominating the Gulf of Aden.

The European Union said its anti-piracy mission would station armed guards on vulnerable cargo ships — the first such deployment of military personnel during international anti-piracy operations in the crucial waterway.

But that deployment would not cover cruise ships, and at least two companies have already altered or canceled routes that would have brought passengers within the reach of pirates.

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The M/S Columbus, on an around-the-world trip that began in Italy, will drop off its 246 passengers Wednesday at the Yemeni port of Hodeidah before sailing through the gulf, the Hapag-Lloyd cruise company said.

Passengers will take a charter flight to Dubai and spend three days at a five-star hotel waiting to rejoin the 490-foot vessel in Oman’s port of Salalah for the remainder of the trip. The Hamburg-based company called the shift a “precautionary measure.”

Piracy has become rampant off the Somali coast, and recently pirates have begun targeting cruise liners as well as commercial vessels. On Nov. 30, pirates fired upon the M/S Nautica — a cruise liner carrying 650 passengers and 400 crew — but the massive ship outran its assailants. Other ships have not been so lucky.

Pirates have attacked 32 vessels and hijacked 12 of them since NATO deployed a four-vessel flotilla in the region Oct. 24 to escort cargo ships and conduct anti-piracy patrols. Ships still being held for huge ransoms include a Saudi oil tanker carrying $100 million in crude and a Ukrainian ship loaded with tanks and heavy weapons.

Hapag-Lloyd decided on the detour for its passengers after the German government denied the company’s request for a security escort through the gulf, company spokesman Rainer Mueller said.

“We won’t travel through the Gulf of Aden with passengers” as long as the German Foreign Ministry’s travel warning is in effect, Mueller said.

Another German cruise ship operator, Stuttgart-based Hansa Touristik, canceled a trip that would have brought the M/S Arion through the Gulf on Dec. 27, company spokeswoman Birgit Kelern said.

Directors of a third German cruise company, the Bremen-based Plantours & Partner, were meeting with ship captains in Venice, Italy to decide whether to go ahead with a trip through the gulf. Passengers will learn Wednesday whether the M/S Vistamar will set sail Dec. 16 as planned, spokeswoman Sandra Marnen said.

A U.S. Navy official said while the danger of a pirate attack was significant, it was not advising ships to avoid transiting the gulf.

“We are advising all ships to transit through the international traffic corridor within the Gulf of Aden,” said Lt. Nathan Christensen, a Bahrain-based spokesman for the U.S. Navy’s 5th Fleet, referring to a security corridor patrolled by the international coalition since August.

Some 21,000 ships a year — or more than 50 a day — cross the Gulf of Aden, which links the Mediterranean Sea, the Suez Canal and the Red Sea to the Indian Ocean.

The growing chaos in impoverished Somalia, which has had no effective government for nearly two decades, has allowed an Islamic insurgency to flourish in the country at the same time as speedboat bandits attack ships offshore.

The EU, meanwhile, launched its anti-piracy mission five days early on Tuesday, before it takes over for the NATO ships next Monday. The EU mission will include six ships and up to three aircraft patrolling at any one time, and will station armed guards aboard some cargo vessels, such as ships transporting food aid to Somalia, according to the British naval commander in charge of the mission.

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British military reports a suspected piracy attack off the coast of Somalia

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MOGADISHU, Somalia (AP) — Several people boarded and took control of a vessel in a suspected pirate attack in the Indian Ocean nearly 700 miles (1,100 kilometers) east of Somalia’s coastal capital Mogadishu, the British military reported Tuesday.

The vessel was boarded by several people from two craft, “one large and one small,” said a statement from the British military’s United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operation. “Unauthorised persons now have control of the vessel,” the statement said. It gave no other details.

British maritime security company Ambrey reported that 20 armed assailants took control of the vessel while it was going from the Mozambique capital Maputo to Hamriya in the United Arab Emirates.

Once-rampant piracy off the Somali coast diminished after a peak in 2011, but concerns about new attacks have grown in recent months.

In December, at least two incidents were reported. One involved a trading vessel seized by heavily armed people near the town of Eyl off the coast of Somalia. The other involved a Maltese-flagged merchant vessel that was hijacked in the Arabian Sea last and moved to the same area off Somalia’s coast.

The waters off Somalia saw a peak in piracy in 2011 when the U.N. said more than 160 attacks were recorded. The incidents declined drastically afterward, largely due to the presence of American and allied navies in international waters.

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Warship Rushes in to Investigate Suspected Pirate Attack off Somalia

By Jonathan Saul

LONDON (Reuters) -A Spanish navy ship is sailing at full speed towards a Maltese-flagged commercial vessel that may have been hijacked by pirates off Somalia, the European Union's Somali counter piracy force said on Friday.

If confirmed, it would be the first successful hijacking involving Somali pirates since 2017 when a crackdown by international navies stopped a rash of seizures in the Gulf of Aden and the Indian Ocean.

EUNAVFOR's joint operations centre in Spain said it received an alert on Thursday about the "alleged pirate-hijacked vessel" Ruen, which was approximately 500 nautical miles east of Socotra Island, off Somalia.

In Somalia's breakaway Puntland region, a member of a group that helped organise raids on ships in the past told Reuters he had heard pirates had managed to seize a vessel.

"Six of my pirate friends managed to capture a ship and they will bring it to the coast of the eastern region of Puntland," Mukhtar Mohamud said by phone from the coastal city of Qandala.

He did not name the vessel and Puntland's maritime authorities had no immediate comment.

EUNAVFOR said the Spanish warship Victoria had been sent to the scene "in order to gather more information and evaluate further actions".

"EUNAVFOR remains vigilant to this and other recent piracy-related events in the area of operations, the northwest Indian Ocean and the Red Sea."

The force added that it was coordinating with the broader international naval Combined Maritime Force.

British maritime security company Ambrey said it believed the Ruen had been hijacked by pirates.

Earlier on Friday, Britain’s maritime body UKMTO said it had received a report from a ship's security officer who believed the crew no longer had control of a vessel which was currently headed towards Somalia.

The Ruen is managed by Bulgaria's Navigation Maritime Bulgare, according to data on public shipping database Equasis.

The vessel was last seen under way in the open sea sailing towards Somalia at 1426 GMT, according to ship tracking data on LSEG.

(Reporting by Jonathan Saul, additional reporting by Abdiqani Hassan in Garowe and George Obulutsa in Nairobi, Editing by William Maclean, Christina Fincher, Nick Macfie and Andrew Heavens)

Copyright 2023 Thomson Reuters .

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Hijacked ship off Somalia fuels fears pirates back in Red Sea waters

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Somali piracy, once an unsolvable security threat, has almost completely stopped. Here’s why

Associate professor, Royal Danish Defence College

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In 2011, pirates carried out 212 attacks in a vast area spanning Somali waters, the Indian Ocean, the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden, actions that the World Bank said cost the world economy US$18 billion a year .

Armed pirates hijacked ships as far away as 1,000 nautical miles from the Somali coast. They held the ships and crews for ransom. The World Bank estimates that Somali pirates received more than US$400 million in ransom payments between 2005 and 2012.

The piracy problem appeared unsolvable. Anti-piracy naval missions undertaken by the world’s most formidable navies, and self-protection measures adopted by the shipping industry, didn’t seem to work. It was, therefore, generally held that the solution lay ashore: major state-building in Somalia to remove the root causes of piracy.

The only problem was that no one was willing to undertake such a mission in the wake of America’s failures in Afghanistan and Iraq .

And then there was an astonishing turnaround. The number of attacks fell to 10 in 2012 and only two ships were hijacked between 2013 and 2023.

For three decades, I have conducted research on international diplomacy, military strategy, use of force and peacebuilding. Together with a colleague specialising in military strategy, I analysed the Somali piracy case . Academics and practitioners agree that four factors interacted to stop the pirates:

the conduct and coordination of several anti-piracy naval operations by the world’s most capable navies, including all five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council : the United States, the United Kingdom, France, Russia and China

the implementation of costly self-protection measures, not least the use of armed guards, by most flag states and shipping owners

development of a comprehensive legal toolbox enabling pirate prosecution and imprisonment

regional capacity-building making it possible to imprison pirates regionally and in Somalia.

Read more: Lift for maritime sector in Kenya and Djibouti after fall in piracy

The surprising thing is not that the four measures on their own proved sufficient to stop Somali piracy. What makes the Somali case special is the international community’s ability to agree to them and pay for their implementation.

The Somali case is important because it’s one of the few success stories in recent years where the use of limited force contributed to a sustainable outcome. Further, Somali pirates were stopped even though the conditions onshore in Somalia didn’t improve in any major way.

Collective action

Theoretically, the international community’s collective effort shouldn’t have happened because safety from piracy is a costly public good .

This means that it’s very expensive to provide but no one can be prevented from enjoying it once it has been produced. The result is a collective action problem that’s rarely overcome in international politics. Most actors prefer to free-ride rather than contribute to the production of the public good.

With respect to Somali piracy, all states and shipping owners had an incentive to leave it to others to solve the problem for them. The implementation of the four factors was very expensive for the states contributing to naval operations, and for shipowners who had to pay for self-protection measures, including hiring of armed guards.

Our study sought to understand how and why the collective action problem was overcome. The hope was to learn something that could help with overcoming similar problems in the future.

What worked

We found that three factors explain why the amount of free-riding was minimised in the Somali case.

The first was that the Somali pirates attacked ships belonging to all five permanent members of the UN Security Council and all the major shipping companies. This induced France to take the lead in military action against the pirates. The US subsequently led with respect to formulating a comprehensive strategy to implement the four factors presented earlier.

The involvement of European Union and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (Nato) in the anti-piracy naval operations made it hard for member states not to contribute. A total of 18 member states contributed ships. China and Russia supported the American-led strategy and launched their own naval operations because their ships were attacked as well.

Second, the US established an institution, the Contact Group on Somali Piracy, tailor-made to formulate and implement a broad anti-piracy strategy. The US handpicked who would lead various working groups so that it contained all the actors – state and non-state – that were required to implement the necessary measures. These actors provided the expertise and the material resources required to implement the four factors presented earlier.

Third, the Somalia federal government and federal member states cooperated closely with anti-piracy efforts. They allowed the use of force against pirates in its national waters and on land. Somali authorities also cooperated with respect to the construction and running of pirate prisons paid for by international donors. This made it possible to overcome the piracy problem without engaging in the major state-building operation that had generally been viewed as a necessary condition for success when the piracy problem peaked in 2011.

Shared interests

Unfortunately, this success story will be hard to replicate. Somali piracy aligned great power, as well as private sector, regional and local state interests to an unusual degree. This is, for example, not the case in the Gulf of Guinea off the west African coast. Here, local states are less cooperative with respect to tackling piracy than Somali governmental actors were.

It’s also not the case with respect to tackling the coups in west Africa , where Russia, the three western members of the UN Security Council and regional states have conflicting interests.

It was the high degree of shared interests among the many actors involved that made the Somali anti-piracy campaign so effective.

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Two vessels freed following Somali pirate hijackings

The rise in pirate activity off Somalia suggests the impact of the Gaza war continues to spread across the region.

One Sri Lankan and one Iranian vessel are reported to have been freed following hijackings by Somali pirates.

Seychelles forces rescued a Sri Lankan fishing boat on Monday, according to President Wavel Ramkalawan’s office. Meanwhile, the Indian Navy said it had freed an Iranian-flagged fishing vessel.

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The attacks on the vessels “by armed Somali pirates”, according to the Seychelles statement, raise further concerns over security in the region’s waters. Amid the war in Gaza, Yemen’s Iran-backed Houthi rebels have waged a campaign targeting ships in the Red Sea.

“Seychellois special military forces boarded the boat with utmost courage to take complete control of the vessel and rescue our Sri Lankan brothers,” the presidency said in the statement.

Sri Lanka had earlier reported that diplomats were talking with Somali authorities trying to ascertain the whereabouts of a fishing vessel and its six crew members.

The apparent abduction had come two weeks after Sri Lanka said it would join the US-led operation to protect merchant vessels sailing in the Red Sea against the Houthi attacks.

Meanwhile, the Indian Navy announced that it had freed an Iranian fishing vessel hijacked off the coast of Somalia.

“The fishing vessel had been boarded by pirates and the crew taken as hostages,” Indian Navy spokesman Commander Vivek Madhwal said, naming the vessel as the Iranian-flagged Iman.

An Indian naval warship had “ensured the successful release of all 17 crew members along with the boat,” he added.

The suspected hijackings in waters off Somalia have raised concerns that Somali pirates have resumed activity, a decade after they caused chaos in international shipping.

The hijacking of the Sri Lankan vessel occurred in international waters about 840 nautical miles (1,555km) east of Somalia, 1,100 nautical miles (2,040km) from Sri Lanka and north of Seychelles, Sri Lankan Navy spokesman Captain Gayan Wickramasuriya said.

Two to three armed men had arrived in a 23m (75-foot) vessel, boarded the fishing trawler, fired shots apparently to warn away other fishing boats nearby, and taken away the fishing trawler and the fishermen, said Susantha Kahawatta, a top official in Sri Lanka’s Fisheries Department.

Kahawatta added that all details of the abduction were provided by fishermen in the other trawlers, and they identified the attackers as Somali.

Yemen’s Iran-backed Houthi rebels have launched scores of attacks in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden in response to Israel’s war in Gaza against the Palestinian militant group Hamas.

International naval forces previously patrolling the Gulf of Aden have diverted north into the Red Sea in a bid to halt the attacks.

That has sparked fears that Somali pirates could seek to exploit the vacuum. A first successful case of Somali piracy since 2017 was recorded in December.

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(CNN) -- A luxury cruise line will re-evaluate whether to offer future cruises off the coast of Somalia after pirates attempted to attack one of its ships early Saturday.

The pirates were in two small boats and were carrying machine guns and a rocket-propelled grenade when they attempted the attack on Seabourn Cruise Lines' "Spirit" about 5:35 a.m. local time Saturday, Deborah Natansohn, president of the cruise line, told CNNRadio.

The ship was carrying 150 passengers and a crew of about 160.

The ship, she said, immediately instituted its emergency response system. "The occupants of those boats did not succeed in boarding the ship and eventually turned away ... our captain and crew did a terrific job taking responsive action."

Passenger Mike Rogers of Vancouver, Canada, said the pirates were shooting and sending rockets at the boat. ( Watch how cruise ship outran pirates -- 1:28 )

"The captain tried to run one of the boats over, but they were small boats, about 25 feet long," he told CNNRadio affiliate CKNW in Vancouver.

"Each one had four or five people on it, and (the captain) said he was going to do anything to keep them from getting on board."

The captain, however, did not hit the alarm button to alert passengers of the emergency, Rogers said. "He announced it over the speakers because he was scared people would run up on deck, and he didn't want people on deck because they would have been shot."

The cruise ship eventually outran the pirates' boats, Natansohn said. One person suffered minor injuries, she said without elaborating.

"There's some minor damage done to the ship," Rogers said. "There's no water right now, for instance, in some places, and I believe one of the grenades actually went off in one of the cabins, but everyone on board is fine."

The ship is now en route to the Seychelles Islands, Natansohn said.

On Thursday, the United Nations' World Food Program warned that hijackings off the coast of Somalia were restricting the delivery of needed food assistance to the country.

"The southern Somali coastline is one of the most dangerous in the world," the WFP said on its Web site. "In recent months, WFP's operations in Somalia have been sabotaged by the hijackings of two vessels carrying relief food. Ship owners are now demanding armed escorts to travel in these waters."

Natansohn said efforts were under way Saturday to locate the pirates. "We have notified U.S., Canadian and Australian authorities because most of our passengers come from those three countries, as well as local authorities in Africa."

"Seabourn 'Spirit' has offered itineraries in that part of the world before, but we'll obviously be looking at the incident to determine what to do in the future," she said.

Rogers said, "We're always looking for adventure, but this is probably a little more than we would normally look for."