Ravenna:
Somali pirates seized 2 ships, one with Indian crew members. The UK-flagged tanker, St James Park, was the first merchant vessel to have been hijacked in the Gulf of Aden in nearly six months.
The ship set sail from Tarragona, Spain, and was headed for Thailand. The tanker has 26 crew members from India, the Philippines, Russia, Georgia, Romania, Bulgaria, Ukraine, Poland and Turkey.
The waters off Somalia are teeming with pirates who have hijacked dozens of ships for multimillion-dollar ransoms in the past two years.
An international naval force now patrols the Gulf of Aden, one of the world's busiest shipping lanes.