More Piracy Near Somalia

[davidbfpo]

Who moved first then? From WaPo:

Somali pirates who seized a Comoros-flagged oil tanker earlier this week after five years without a major hijacking in the region have released the ship and its crew without conditions, officials said late Thursday. Security official Ahmed Mohamed told The Associated Press the pirates disembarked the ship, which was heading to Bossaso port, the region’s commercial hub, with its eight Sri Lankan crew members aboard.
Mohamed said the release occurred after negotiations by local elders and officials with the pirates, who seized the tanker on Monday.
Naval forces from the semiautonomous state of Puntland and the pirates clashed earlier Thursday after the pirates opened fire.

Link:https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/africa/somali-official-says-pirates-open-fire-on-local-naval-forces/2017/03/16/8876700a-0a39-11e7-bd19-fd3afa0f7e2a_story.html?

I was puzzled at the references in the reporting to the EU naval mission, as my last post about in them in November 2016 was that it was due to disappear, instead:

On 28 November 2016 the Council of the EU extended the Mandate of Operation ATALANTA until December 2018.

Link:http://eunavfor.eu/mission

Currently it has two frigates, one French, One Spanish; with two P3 Orions, one German and one Spanish. See:http://eunavfor.eu/deployed-units/mpras/#news-tabs

[AdamG]

DJIBOUTI (AP) - Pirates have returned to the waters off Somalia, but the spike in attacks on commercial shipping does not yet constitute a trend, senior U.S. officials said Sunday.
The attacks follow about a five-year respite for the region, where piracy had grown to crisis proportions during the 2010-2012 period, drawing the navies of the United States and other nations into a lengthy campaign against the pirates.
U.S. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis told reporters at a military base in the African nation of Djibouti, near the Gulf of Aden, that even if the piracy problem persists, he would not expect it to require significant involvement by the U.S. military.
At a news conference with Mattis, the commander of U.S. Africa Command said there have been about six pirate attacks on vulnerable commercial ships in the past several weeks.

http://www.wbng.com/story/35219587/u...rs-off-somalia