Pirate attacks around the world rose by 10 per cent in 2007, fuelled by deteriorating security in the seas off war-torn Somalia and the increasingly volatile oil state of Nigeria.

It was the first increase in piracy on the seas for three years, after a significant decline credited to greater vigilance on the part of South-East Asian nations bordering the Strait of Malacca, through which passes a third of the world's commercial shipping.

Attacks on global shipping fell from 445 in 2003 to 236 in 2006 but shot back up to 269 last year, according to the latest annual piracy report from the International Maritime Bureau. Nigerian and Somali waters accounted for 70 of those attacks.

The pirates active in the seas around Africa were more violent and better armed than ever before. Somalia's 1,880-mile coastline, the longest of any country in Africa, accounted for the majority of armed attacks, which rose by 35 per cent from 2007.

Pirates there used launch craft, rocket-propelled grenade launchers and automatic weapons in attacks that were mostly on merchant ships along key shipping routes linking the Red Sea and Mediterranean with the Indian Ocean. “The nature of the attacks indicates that the pirates/robbers boarding the vessels are better armed and they have shown no hesitation in assaulting and injuring the crew,” the bureau concluded.

In Somalia, one of the world's most unstable states, no vessel was immune from attack, not even United Nations food shipments or boats carrying refugees fleeing to Yemen.

Piracy surged with the ousting of the ruling Islamic militias from Mogadishu in early 2006 but fell at the end of the year, when the United States sent warships to patrol the coast, ending several standoffs over hijacked merchant ships and protecting aid supplies from pillage.

Such international military intervention may prove to be the only way to stop the pirates, which have until now shown complete disregard for the law, the maritime bureau said yesterday. Few countries in the region have the naval capacity to tackle the problem alone. There was praise, however, for Indonesia, a former top piracy hotspot, where incidents fell for a third successive year.

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