Singapore - A top-ranking Somali police official said Wednesday that the fight against piracy along the coast of the African state has so far not been successful, despite increased action by international navies in the region.

"Up to now there is not any progress about piracy in Somalia," police commissioner Abdi Hassan Awaleh said on the sidelines of the general assembly of global police organization Interpol in Singapore.

The international community was putting a lot of effort and money in the anti-piracy campaign, he said, "but the result is very little."

"Piracy is coming from the land," Abdi Hassan said, noting that the military action could not succeed "if there is no law and order in the country."

Somalia had no functional government from 1991 to 2004, he said, giving one reason for the emergence of piracy in the country.

The other reason was that the Somali people felt that their livelihood was endangered by foreign fleets fishing illegally off the coast and vessels polluting the sea with waste, he said.

Those ships were "from the same countries that are now providing the warships fighting piracy," he claimed, but without giving names.

Interpol's Executive Director for Police Services Jean-Michel Louboutin said that piracy was an organized crime which was prepared on land.

"The fight on the sea is just the tip of the iceberg," he said. A lot more needed to be done on the ground, he added.

Australia's Inspector for Sea Security Mick Palmer said that for fighting piracy in a country "the re-establishment or the improvement of the rule of law is critical."

According to the International Maritime Bureau (IMB), 294 piracy-related incidents were reported in the first three quarters of 2009, surpassing the total number reported in
2008.

Of these 294 attacks, 97 took place in Somalia's Gulf of Aden and a further 47 off the rest of the Somali coast, an IMB report published in late September said.

Thirty-four attacks resulted in successful hijackings, the report said.

The average cost for a hijacking came up to 7 million US dollars, of which 2 million dollars were paid as ransom, Palmer said.

As the pirates, many of them just teenagers, received only about 10,000 dollars each, chasing those money trails was obviously an important part of the process, he added.

"There is clear evidence of increasing organization in the activity of the pirates," Palmer warned. The pirates' weaponry continued to get more sophisticated and the attacks were taking place as far as 1,200 nautical miles (2,200 kilometres) off-shore. (dpa)