Wednesday, Manila - Almost 100 Philippine sailors are being held hostage by pirates in Somalia as the United Nations appeals for international help to protect UN food shipments in Somalia's pirate-infested waters.
"Please send escorts," the UN's World Food Programme Somalia director Peter Goossens said.
"By September 27, the Canadian vessels have to go, I have nobody yet that has come forward to say they will take over ... I am getting very nervous about what's going to happen afterwards,." he said in an interview in Brussels.
Asked what would happen if no country provided ship escorts by then, Mr Goossens said: "That means people are going to be short of food." Canada last month sent its frigate Ville de Quebec to being escorting WFP ships carrying aid.
Heavily-armed Somali gunmen, usually using speedboats, have seized more than 30 vessels this year, making the waters off the Horn of Africa the most dangerous in the world and hampering aid shipments.
At least 17 Filipinos were taken captive in the latest piracy incident in Somalia this week, bringing to 97 the total number of Philippine sailors held as hostages.
Nine have been freed and one has died in captivity, the Philippine foreign affairs department said. The Filipinos are the biggest group of sailors held captive in Somalia, officials said.
More than a dozen ships with more than 200 crew members are being held for ransom.
"We're doing everything to secure their early release," Claro Cristobal, a foreign affairs department spokesman, told reporters, adding the department was coordinating with the employers and embassy staff near Somalia.
The Philippines supplies one-third of the world's shipping manpower with about 180,000 men and women.Global shipping groups have called on naval powers to do more to stop piracy off the coast of Somalia.
The waters between Somalia and Yemen are a major artery used by nearly 20,000 vessels a year heading to and from the Suez Canal.
Through the canal
The 700 million tonnes passing through the canal in 2007 was over 9 per cent of an estimated 7.7 billion tonnes carried by global shipping. Merchant shipping carries more than 90 per cent of the world's traded goods by volume.
"All the shipping companies are taking this very seriously and are very concerned. This is an unprecedented rise in attacks," said Mr Pottengal Mukundan, director of the International Maritime Bureau, a global piracy watchdog.
In May, the advisory Joint War Committee of Lloyd's Market Association designated the strategic channel at high risk of "war, strikes, terrorism and related perils".
"But it's just a recommendation, and some underwriters may not follow it for their very important clients," Mr Mukundan told Reuters.
"Costs have not gone up. Of course, if you are hijacked they go up quite significantly. But there is no contingent cost to piracy."
Somali pirates are currently holding about 130 crew members hostage on at least seven vessels, including huge chemical tankers and bulk-carriers.
Gunmen are holding vessels from Japan, Malaysia, Thailand, Nigeria, Germany and Iran.
Attacks at sea have boomed as lawlessness increased in Somalia, where there has not been a working government since warlords overthrew dictator Mohamed Siad Barre in 1991.
Since the start of last year, more than 8,000 civilians have been killed in fighting between allied Somali government and Ethiopian soldiers and Islamist rebels.
Another 1 million have been driven from their homes.There are many theories about who exactly is behind the latest spate of hijackings.
Most captured ships bring ransoms of more than $10,000, and in a few cases much more.Some security experts say there are signs insurgents may receive some of the ransoms and use them to fund attacks on the government.
Early this month, the rebels seized the key southern port of Kismayu. The United States says they have links to al Qaeda.Other experts point to ties forged between Somali pirates, most of whom are based in the northern Puntland region, and criminal networks in Yemen during years of people-smuggling.
The Islamists deny masterminding the recent attacks at sea, and other analysts say the insurgents get most of their money from wealthy Somalis abroad, as well as backers in Arab nations.
Analysts say some members of the interim government, many of whom are former warlords, may also profit from piracy. The insecurity has also put a choke on the ability of the United Nations to get food aid to the fast-growing numbers of needy.
That figure has leapt 77 per cent this year to more than 3.2 million ¨C more than a third of Somalia's population.
Further north
Canadian naval ships are escorting World Food Programme shipments to Mogadishu until September, and UN officials say it is hoped that French and then German forces will take over.
Further north in the Gulf of Aden, the recent attacks have also stung the anti-terrorist Combined Task Force 150 into action.
The multinational unit, part of Washington's Operation Enduring Freedom, is based in neighbouring Djibouti and has come to the aid of many ships attacked by pirates.
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