Somali pirates changing tactics: ship owner

By Jonathan Saul

LONDON (Reuters) - Somali pirates are shifting their focus towards the Indian Ocean as foreign navies operating in the Gulf of Aden become more successful in targeting the gangs, a senior shipping industry figure said on Tuesday.

Somali pirate gangs have caused havoc in the waterways linking Europe with Asia this year and have made millions of dollars in ransom payments.

Per Gullestrup, president and chief executive of Clipper Projects, a unit of Danish ship-owning group Clipper, which had one of its vessels hijacked in 2008, said the pirates were adapting their tactics.

"The pirates are obviously changing their hunting grounds and they are moving east of Africa, which we saw earlier this year," he told Reuters in an interview. "That is a high risk area now."

"They are going closer to the Seychelles and that means that of course it is a very vast area and it would be almost impossible to make a secure zone," he said on the sidelines of a piracy conference in London.

Somali pirates, who hijacked a Chinese bulk carrier far off the African coast in the Indian Ocean this week, threatened on Tuesday to execute its 25 Chinese crew members if any rescue was attempted.

"Pirates are increasingly violent and confident and are likely to be more so," Giles Noakes, chief maritime security officer with ship industry group BIMCO, told the conference.

"This is a current, worrying trend," he said.