An oil tanker sits at a naval dock yard after being rescued from pirates, in Lagos, Nigeria, Feb. 22, 2016 (AP photo by Sunday Alamba).
In early May, a high-speed boat pulled alongside the Rio Mitong, a Panama-flagged cargo vessel, just off the coast of Equatorial Guinea. Using ladders to board the ship, a group of assailants kidnapped two crew members, taking them back to the shore, where they subsequently held them for ransom. Another ship was reportedly attacked that same night, elsewhere in the Gulf of Guinea. These attacks are just two among many recent incidents in this vast and strategically significant body of water, where armed robbery, piracy and kidnappings at sea have escalated in recent years. Though piracy overall has decreased globally, [...]
China’s reclamation of Mischief Reef in the Spratly Islands, South China Sea, May 11, 2015 (Photo by Ritchie B. Tongo for European Pressphoto Agency via AP Images).
Editor’s Note: Every Wednesday, WPR Newsletter and Engagement Editor Benjamin Wilhelm curates the week’s top news and expert analysis on China. Vietnam lodged an official protest with China after a Chinese coast guard ship collided with a Vietnamese fishing boat near the disputed Paracel Islands in the South China Sea on Thursday. Hanoi accused the Chinese ship of ramming and sinking the Vietnamese boat before capturing and detaining its crew of eight fishermen on a nearby island. Vietnamese state media reported that two other Vietnamese fishing boats attempted to rescue them, but were also detained. China, however, claimed that the [...]
A member of Kenya’s security forces walks past a damaged police post after an attack by al-Shabab in the settlement of Kamuthe, Garissa county, Kenya, Jan. 13, 2020 (AP photo).
Somalia's semiautonomous Jubbaland region has become a proxy battleground in a Kenya-Somalia maritime dispute that is rooted in a disagreement over which direction the border between the two countries extends into the Indian Ocean. A 62,000-square-mile triangle of the Indian Ocean is driving a wedge in the Horn of Africa. For years, Kenya and Somalia have been at odds over the pie-shaped slice of the sea, to which each lays a claim and which is believed to contain sizable oil and gas deposits. But tensions between the two have been rising in recent months and are magnifying a standoff between [...]
Free Newsletter
Showing 52 - 68 of 211First 1 2 3 4 5 6 13 Last