EU deploying vessel against pirates

MOMBASA, Kenya | The European Union will launch its first naval combat mission Sunday, deploying a British frigate to escort vital U.N. food aid to starving Somalis.

The warship will accompany the small cargo vessel Semlow from Mombasa, Kenya, to the Somali capital Mogadishu, through waters teeming with pirates.

The deployment, code-named Operation Atalanta, marks growing world commitment to combating piracy, and to the 16-year-old Somali aid effort.

The British frigate will be part of six warships and three maritime reconnaissance aircraft that will replace a NATO naval force that has been patrolling the region and escorting cargo ships carrying relief aid to Somalia since the end of October, the Associated Press reported.

Officials said France, Greece, Germany and Britain will provide ships for the initial naval contingent, and France and Italy will provide patrol aircraft.

Besides the NATO ships, 10 other warships from the United States, Russia, Malaysia and India are patrolling the region.

The Indian navy on Saturday captured 23 pirates who threatened a merchant vessel in the Gulf of Aden.

The INS Mysore was escorting merchant ships when it received a distress call from seamen on board the MV Gibe, who said they were being attacked by two boats.

The message said the pirates were firing as their boats closed in on the Gibe, according to a statement from the Indian government. The pirate boats attempted to escape when they saw the Mysore and its helicopter, but were boarded by Indian marine commandos, the statement said.

Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates told a regional security forum in Bahrain on Saturday that the commercial shipping industry could do more to protect itself from piracy off the Somali and Kenyan coasts.

“Companies and ships must be more vigilant about staying within approved traffic corridors,” he said.

Commercial ships should also “speed up” and try to outrun pirates and “pull up the ladders,” so pirates cannot board. “This is not rocket science,” he said.

At the same time, Mr. Gates said that the United States does not have enough intelligence to pinpoint and attack the “two or three families or clans in Somalia that account for most of this activity.”

Somalia hasn’t had a functioning central government since a brutal civil war beginning in 1991. In 2006, Ethiopia invaded the East African country in a bid to tamp down swelling religious extremism, but the invasion sparked a nationalist insurgency that claimed the lives of around 7,000 Somalis in 2007.

Due to the decay of national infrastructure and disruptions to agriculture, some 4 million Somalis — half the population — depend on food donations. The bulk of the food comes by sea, in order to avoid bandit-infested roads.

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