The owners of the Thai-flagged vessel reported that the pirates have already demanded a ransom after Wednesday's incident, said the head of the Piracy Reporting Centre of the London-based International Maritime Bureau, Noel Choong.

Choong said the band of between five and eight pirates approached on a fast boat and fired warning shots to stop the vessel as it sailed off Pangkor island on Malaysia's west coast.

"They kidnapped the crewmen, took the trading documents and after that contacted the owner for a ransom. This is their typical modus operandi," he told AFP.

After a brief lull following the deadly tsunami which devastated Indonesia's Aceh province on Sumatra island last December, there have been at least four kidnap-and-ransom attacks in the busy Malacca Strait in recent months.

As well, regular robberies plague vessels plying the waterway which slices Indonesia's Sumatra island from mainland Southeast Asia. It is one of the busiest shipping lanes in the world, funnelling 50,000 vessels a year between the West and the East.

"We do not know if it is one or two or even more gangs involved but what we do know is that it's easy money for them and that the countries concerned have to be serious and committed in dealing with these cases," said Choong.

He said that 2004 saw the number of attacks increase despite coordinated patrols by Singapore, Indonesia and Malaysia, and he urged affected nations to redouble their efforts.

"Especially on the Indonesian side because the pirates are believed to be coming from there so the Indonesian government has to look at this," he said.

In the most recent attack, which triggered a Japanese request for a military response, two Japanese and a Filipino were snatched in March from a Japanese tugboat and released a week later.

Choong said pirates were back in business after the tsunami, which is believed to have temporarily stalled them by destroying their boats and guns, and foiling their movements with the heavy naval presence that followed.

"By late February most of the navy ships left so it actually created a vacuum and there were not many patrols. The pirate attacks start on February 28 and within a week or a few days we recorded three attacks of kidnap and ransom," he said.

The Singaporean and Indonesian navies last week launched a system that provides real-time radar surveillance for the Singapore Strait to improve the fight against piracy and terrorism.

And in Malaysia, the government said that a new maritime agency established to fight piracy, illegal fishing and environmental pollution will begin operation in November.

All rights reserved. � 2005 Agence France-Presse. Sections of the information displayed on this page (dispatches, photographs, logos) are protected by intellectual property rights owned by Agence France-Presse. As a consequence, you may not copy, reproduce, modify, transmit, publish, display or in any way commercially exploit any of the content of this section without the prior written consent of Agence France-Presse.

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