Searches of captured mother ships operating off the Somali coast have revealed for the first time that pirate gangs are coordinating their attacks against commercial shipping, the commander of the European Union's naval task force said Wednesday. British Rear Admiral Philip Jones said that in recent weeks his flotilla had captured four of the mother ships used to resupply the small pirate speedboats that operate far offshore in the Indian Ocean.
"We do fairly extensive trawls of all the vessels we capture to look for ... evidence we can use to work (out) ourselves what the pirates tactics are," Jones told reporters. The most recent evidence, he said, shows the mother ships are telling each other about potential targets.
The EU flotilla's primary task is escorting ships chartered by the World Food Program to carry food aid to Somalia. In the five months it has been deployed, the flotilla's warships have escorted 23 vessels that have delivered enough food to feed 1.5 million people in the war-ravaged nation. Despite the international naval presence, attacks on commercial shipping off the Somali coast have exploded in the last two months as the pirates have taken to sailing far out into the Indian Ocean to attack vessels beyond the patrol range of the warships.
Jones said he was "bemused" by media reports that the pirates were receiving intelligence on the movement of commercial shipping from sources in the West, adding that the searches of the mother ships had yielded no such evidence.
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