The Thai government has warned Thai fishing trawlers to be on the guard against possible pirate attacks in the Malacca Straits. The official warning follows a report in the Singapore-based Straits Times on increased piracy in the area.
Cargo ships have been frequently attacked in the Malacca Straits over the last five months, according to the newspaper. The attacks have been more frequent, even in broad daylight, the Director-General of the Department of Fisheries, Sitdhi Boonyaratpalin, warned, despite joint patrols by the navies of three countries: Malaysia, Indonesia and Singapore.
A private television channel AT reported Thursday in India that fifteen people have been killed by pirates in a fishing trawler in the deep sea of the Bay of Bengal.
The report said the trawler drifted to the shore of Bangladesh's tourist city Cox's Bazar Thursday and people onboard the fishing trawler found the bodies of 15 people, most of them fishermen.
The people took out 16 bodies from the ice room of the trawler and later found one man was still alive. The man later said pirates took the machine and other valuables of the trawler and put the fishermen and other staff of the trawler inside its the ice room where they died. The engineless trawler was drifted by waves to the shore. But the man could not say on which day pirates killed the people.
The killing of fishermen by pirates is common in the Bay of Bengal. Pirates kill fishermen in trawlers and sometimes they throw the fishermen into the Bay.