Pirate attacks fall in 2004

Pirate attacks fall in 2004

MALAYSIA: Pirate attacks worldwide fell in 2004 to their lowest numbers in five years, but scores of seafarers were still killed, injured or taken hostage, an international group said on Monday.

Pirates attacked 325 vessels across the globe last year, down 27 percent from 445 incidents in 2003, the British-based International Maritime Bureau said. It was the lowest annual figure since 1999, when 300 attacks were reported.

Indonesia's waters were the most pirate-afflicted, but attacks ceased in some areas after December's tsunami because some sea bandits might have been killed, the IMB said in a report issued by its piracy watch center in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

Ninety-three attacks -- more than a quarter of the worldwide total -- were in Indonesia. But that figure did not include another 37 assaults in the Strait of Malacca, a key shipping lane between Indonesia's Sumatra island and peninsular Malaysia.

However, attacks in Indonesia have declined since 2003, when 121 attacks were reported.

The IMB noted that following the Dec. 26 tsunami pirate attacks halted near the hardest hit parts of Sumatra, where tugboats and barges had been the targets of numerous kidnappings, robberies and hijack attempts in recent years.

"This is probably because some of the pirates may have died during the tsunami," the bureau said. "It is certainly the case that many would have lost equipment such as boats and weapons." --AP