French forces detained 11 suspected pirates during an assault on what they described as a pirate “mother ship” in the Indian Ocean off the eastern coast of Somalia Wednesday, less than 24 hours after an American cargo ship was attacked by pirates in the same region.
The 11 detainees are being held on board a French frigate, the Nivôse, part of a European Union antipiracy task force patrolling in the area, the French defense ministry said in a statement.
The French forces initially responded to a distress call from a Liberian-flagged container ship, the Safmarine Asia, which came under attack by rocket-propelled grenades and gunfire from two small pirate skiffs Tuesday night. A helicopter from the Nivôse arrived on the scene and observed the skiffs retreating and returning to the “mother ship” — actually, a 30-foot boat — which was being used as a floating base about 460 miles off the Somali coast, according to a statement by the European Union’s Maritime Security Center.
The French forces then mounted their assault on the boat on Wednesday, and found a range of firearms and equipment on board, 17 barrels of fuel, as well as the suspected pirates. The Nivôse took the boat and the skiffs in tow and is now on its way to the port of Mombasa, Kenya, the Maritime Security Center said. The detainees are expected to be sent to France to be prosecuted.
Pirate activity has escalated sharply in recent months in the open seas off of the Horn of Africa. It is now being answered by increasingly assertive military operations by the American and French navies. On Sunday, Navy sharpshooters killed three pirates holding an American cargo ship captain hostage. Last week, French naval forces freed a yacht, the Tanit, in an operation in which two pirates and a hostage were killed; three pirates were taken prisoner in that incident, and they have been sent to France.
Late on Tuesday, an American cargo ship was attacked by pirates armed with grenade launchers and automatic weapons off the coast of Somalia, but the attackers failed to take over the ship, which was able to continue with its delivery of food aid to Mombasa. The ship, the Liberty Sun, was damaged in the attack, but no one in the crew was hurt, according to the ship’s owner, Liberty Maritime of Lake Success, N.Y.
“We are under attack by pirates, we are being hit by rockets. Also bullets,” a crew member aboard the Liberty Sun, Thomas Urbik, said in an e-mail message to his mother during the incident, The Associated Press reported. “We are barricaded in the engine room and so far no one is hurt.”
Mr. Urbik said a rocket had “penetrated the bulkhead but the hole is small. Small fire, too, but put out.”
The Liberty Sun sent out a distress call around 6:30 p.m., and an American Navy destroyer responded — the U.S.S. Bainbridge, the same ship that rescued the captain of the Maersk Alabama, another American-flagged cargo ship, from another set of Somali pirates on Sunday.
The rescued captain, Richard Phillips, was aboard the U.S.S. Bainbridge when it responded to this latest attack, a Navy spokesman said. The Bainbridge had been heading to Mombasa to reunite Captain Phillips with his crew before their departure Wednesday for the United States, but the attack delayed the captain’s arrival.
By the time the Bainbridge reached the Liberty Sun, some 300 miles southeast of the Somali capital, Mogadishu, and some five hours after the distress call, the pirates had fled.
The Liberty Sun escaped by conducting “evasive maneuvers” — which can include speeding up the ship or zigzagging in the water to destabilize the small pirate skiffs, said Lt. Nathan Christensen of the U.S. Navy’s Fifth Fleet in Bahrain.
A small security team was placed aboard the Liberty Sun, Lieutenant Christensen said, and the Bainbridge was escorting the Liberty Sun toward Mombasa on Wednesday. The crew of the Alabama flew out of Mombasa on Wednesday and was expected at Andrews Air Force base in Maryland after 9:30 p.m. When Captain Phillips would make it home was not immediately known.
After the botched hijacking of the Alabama last week, the pirates seized Captain Phillips and held him at sea in a lifeboat for four days. But Captain Phillips was freed when American snipers aboard the Bainbridge fatally shot the three pirates in the lifeboat using night-vision scopes.
A NATO anti-piracy operation reported 16 ships currently being held for ransom in the Gulf of Aden and off Somalia. Pirates in the region have attacked 80 ships so far this year, said Pottengal Mukundan, director of the International Maritime Bureau in London. The bureau’s Piracy Reporting Center, based in Malaysia, said 18 ships are being held, with an estimated 300 crew members.
NATO and European Union antipiracy task forces patrol the vast region, which covers some 1 million square miles of open sea, and they are increasingly shifting their attention to the waters off eastern Somalia, which are experiencing a surge in pirate attacks. Twenty-three ships have been hijacked near the Horn of Africa so far this year, compared with 40 in all of 2008, Lieutenant Christensen said.
On Tuesday, two ships — a Greek-owned container ship, the M.V. Irene, and a Togoloese-flagged cargo ship, the M.V. Seahorse — were hijacked by pirates off the Somali coast and their crews taken hostage, maritime authorities said. On Wednesday, another Greek ship, the Titan, seized in March, was released, Reuters reported, citing an official with the Greek merchant marine.
