Somali pirates are seizing ships as far as the Mozambique Channel and off the coast of India, extending their range further than they have until now, a senior US admiral said today.
With hijacking offering a lucrative alternative for many in impoverished Somalia, which is battling an Islamist insurgency, Somali pirates have stepped up attacks in recent months, making tens of millions of dollars in ransoms from seizing ships in the Indian Ocean and Gulf of Aden.
Admiral Mark Fitzgerald, who is commander of US naval forces in Europe and Africa, said that while the attacks were "relatively free of violence", armed gangs were widening the area of operations.
"The entire Indian Ocean is becoming a problem of piracy," he told a forum at the International Institute for Strategic Studies think tank in London.
"We have seen them clearly down in the Mozambique Channel, we saw a hijacking there and we saw one this week off India," he said.
On Tuesday, Somali pirates seized a 35,000 tonne Turkish ship 1,000 nautical miles east of the northern coast of Somalia - closer to India than Somalia.
Foreign navies have been deployed off the Gulf of Aden since the start of 2009 and have operated convoys, as well as setting up a transit corridor across dangerous waters.
But their forces have been stretched over the vast expanses of water including the Indian Ocean, leaving merchant vessels vulnerable.
Mr Fitzgerald said pirates were hijacking ships to use for their operations.
"Depending on what ship they are using for a mother ship, it allows them to range far and wide."
"We can't put ships out everywhere and just start randomly looking. So we really need intelligence based operations to go after that kind of threat," he said.
Reuters