The United States navy has captured a crew of suspected pirates off the coast of Somalia after firing warning shots at their ship, in the first sign of a military crackdown on Somalia’s anarchic coastal waters. Sailors boarded the dhow after its crew surrendered and discovered a cache of small arms, the US navy said.
Since 2004 there has been a dramatic escalation in the number of pirate raids off the coast of Somalia, where there has been no effective government for 15 years.
A series of pirate raids has forced relief agencies to take shipments of emergency food aid overland, raising the costs and threatening the survival of half a million people in drought-stricken southern Somalia. Trade routes have also been threatened, and shipowners have been urging western navies to take on the heavily armed pirate gangs.
The USS Winston S Churchill, a destroyer, tried ”aggressive manoeuvring” to stop the suspected pirate ship after failing to establish radio communications, according to a statement from the US navy.
When this failed, ”Churchill fired warning shots. The vessel cut speed and went dead in the water,” about 80km off the coast, the statement said. After further warning shots were fired, the crew agreed to surrender and crewmen began to come over to the destroyer in a small boat.
The pursuit began on Friday, after the US navy’s Fifth Fleet, which patrols the Indian Ocean, received reports of ”an attempted act of piracy”. The Churchill shadowed the suspected pirate ship overnight and captured the crew and ship on Saturday afternoon. Sixteen Indians and 10 Somalis were being questioned on the Churchill last night.
So rampant is the piracy that many shipping companies resort to paying ransoms, saying they have few alternatives. The Semlow, a ship carrying rice for emergency food aid, was held by pirates from June to October last year; the ship was only released after a ransom was paid.
One of the boldest attacks came last November. Two boats full of pirates approached a luxury cruise liner, the , and fired rocket-propelled grenades and assault rifles before the assualt was repelled by crew members using an ear-splitting acoustic device. Pirates from Somalia are currently holding hostage a cargo ship and four trawlers.
Somalia has had no central administration since 1991, when warlords ousted a dictatorship and carved the nation of 8,2-million into a patchwork of fiefdoms. – Guardian Unlimited Â