Word: flotilla
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...consider the situation just three years ago, when an internationally brokered ceasefire collapsed: At that point, the rebels controlled around 5,800 square miles (15,000 sq. km.) of territory in a mini-state in the island nation's north and east. They had a navy composed of a flotilla of gunboats and transports, and even launched daring strikes on Colombo with their own makeshift airforce. But a sustained government offensive has inflicted defeat after defeat, and that, in turn, has prompted widespread desertions. Today, just over 1,000 fighters, including the LTTE's shadowy, ruthless leader, Velupillai Prabhakaran, have...
Offshore, a growing flotilla of warships from the U.S., Russia, the European Union and India has been trying to keep Somali pirates from taking their pick of the 16,000 mainly cargo ships that pass through the Suez Canal annually. There are several gangs of pirates; armed with Kalashnikov rifles and traveling on small fishing boats and skiffs, they have attacked more than 80 ships and hijacked at least 30, collecting anywhere from $18 million to $30 million in ransom, according to the British strategic think tank Chatham House. Big paydays have made them progressively bolder: one gang is still...
Crossing the bay, the wetlands are dotted with a sofa here, a plastic garbage can there and suddenly along the causeway, a flotilla of beached, battered boats appears, awkwardly stuck in the median, wedged against highway signs, land-bound, askew and sad. Capturing the wholesale destruction of a hurricane is difficult. We learned that with Hurricane Katrina where the images, no matter how awful, were insufficient measured against the reality. The most overpowering sensation is the smell, a stench that seems to imprint itself on the brain's memory bank, suddenly wafting back hours after you have left the scene...
...cruise into Gaza was bracingly celebrity-free. As Jeff Halper, the sole Israeli aboard the "Free Gaza" flotilla, says: "We didn't have anybody famous. It was old-fashioned 'people power.' We just wanted to show what happens when ordinary people from around the world get together to try breaking this immoral siege on Gaza...
Roughly once a week, a flotilla of half a dozen or so tankers heaves into the steamy southern Iraqi port of Khur al-Zubar, and the normally sleepy docks jump to life. Teams of workers scramble over ships arriving mainly from Dubai, Bahrain and other points around the Persian Gulf to connect hoses for the flow of diesel, kerosene and gasoline. Old-fashioned gas-station tickers beside the ships clatter as thousands of liquid tons begin moving...