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The fears that have shipping may
become easy target of terrorists
attacks seem to have confirmed with
the French investigators who
gathered evidence that an attacking
boat was found during the first
detailed inspection of the
French-flagged tanker Limburg,
chartered by Petronas, that was hit
off Yemeni coast two weeks ago.
The crude oil tanker, laden with
about 400,00 barrels of Arab heavy
crude oil from Saudi Arabia was on
its way to load another 1.5 million
barrels in Yemen when the incident
occurred.
"We found debris of a boat which
obviously does not belong to the
tanker," said Jean-Francois Perrouty,
noting the debris was made of
fibreglass.
Perrouty, quoted in Lloyd's List
daily, said the French Foreign
Ministry would be issuing a
communique about the result of the
first day of the investigations.
The evidence revealed put paid to
theories propounded by Yemeni and US
authorities that the blast, that
caused the death of one member of
the tanker's 25-man crew on Sunday,
had been the result of an internal
explosion.
The revelation coincided with a
report in the pan-Arab newspaper
Asharq al-Awsat which said it
received a statement from a
fundamentalist group in Yemen
claiming responsibility for the
explosion.
According to the newspaper the Aden-Abyan
Islamic Army, a militant group
accused of carrying out several
bombings and kidnappings of
foreigners in Yemen, said it carried
out the attack on the tanker to
avenge the execution of one of its
leaders, Zein al-Abidine al-Mihdar.
Lloyd's List said the group is
believed to have links with the al-Qa'eda
terrorist network of Osama bin Laden
and was established by Yemenis and
other Arabs who fought in
Afghanistan against the Soviet Union
in the 1980s.
The governor of Hadramout, Abdul
Kader Hilal, questioned the claim,
saying the group did not have the
means to carry out such an
operation.
He acknowledged, nevertheless, that
a member of the group was among
those who had been rounded up for
questioning.
The terrorist attack signals a
change in al-Qa'eda's escalating
sea-borne jihad from military to
civilian ships, US officials said.
Marine General Peter Pace,
vice-chairman of the Joint Chiefs of
Staff, outlined the new approach on
Monday at a press conference at the
Pentagon in Washington.
He told journalists it was likely
that al-Qa'eda or other terrorist
groups might be shifting away from
well-defended naval vessels to
softer targets, such as oil carriers
like the Limburg.
While Pace conceded there was no
"indication per se" of a shift
toward soft targets, he nonetheless
said "terrorists who prefer to not
have to attack hard targets would go
after something else, whether that's
a ship or a building or something.
"Clearly, the better defended a
particular thing is, the less likely
it is to be targeted," Pace said.
Meanwhile, shipowners have been
handed the strongest warning yet
that marine insurance rates could
rocket.
A cluster of casualties, which has
torn a $750m hole in the global
insurance market, has underlined
that insureds have been fortunate to
escape with some of the smallest
rises in any industry since the
sea-change of the terrorist attacks
in the US.
Notice of a push for higher premiums
from London's top underwriters comes
as ship operators are preparing for
steeper premiums on a complementary
front, liability insurance.
P&I club boards are to meet soon to
consider general rate increases next
February which analysts speculate
will be at least 20 per cent, plus a
sizeable top-up to reflect an
inevitable increase in P&I group
reinsurance.
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