U.S. MAY 23, 2018 / 7:21 AM / UPDATED 4 HOURS AGO

Pirate attacks grow in South America and Caribbean: report

Jonathan Saul
3 MIN READ

LONDON (Reuters) - Pirate attacks around South American and Caribbean waters are growing, and violence is increasingly used during robberies committed on vessels at anchor, a report showed on Wednesday.

The Oceans Beyond Piracy (OBP) non-profit group recorded 71 incidents in Latin America and the Caribbean in 2017, a 163 percent increase over 2016.

OBP said the majority of the attacks occurred in territorial waters, with around 59 percent of incidents involving robbery on yachts. Anchorages in Venezuela, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Colombia and St. Lucia were the regional hot spots during 2017, it said.

“We have observed a significant increase in violent incidents and anchorage crime, particularly in the anchorages of Venezuela and the recent violent incidents off Suriname in the first part of this year,” said the report’s lead author Maisie Pigeon.

In late April a pirate attack off the coast of Suriname left at least a dozen fishermen from neighboring Guyana missing and feared dead with three separate bodies found in what was described by Guyana’s President David Granger as a “massacre”.

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