MOGADISHU (AFP) — As an EU armada began operations off Somalia's pirate-infested coast Monday, maritime authorities said pirates had extended their already vast area of activity further south.
Britain's Admiral Philip Jones will have six warships and three spotter planes at his disposal over the next year for his naval force, dubbed Atalanta, which took over protection duties Monday from four NATO vessels.
The EU's first-ever naval operation will also be allowed to use force, where necessary, European Union foreign policy chief Javier Solana said.
"The rules of engagement are very robust, with the possibility of using all means including force to protect, to deter and to prosecute all acts of piracy," Solana told reporters in Brussels.
At least eight EU members will participate in the operation, which is tasked to escort aid deliveries to war-torn Somalia by UN World Food Programme vessels and patrol the area to dissuade pirate attacks on merchant ships.
"This operation, under British command, I hope will begin to establish international order in seas that are vital to trade right around the world," said British Foreign Minister David Miliband.
But the pirates have already modified their tactics in the game of high-seas tag with warships deployed to protect shipping, and have gradually turned their gunsights on targets outside Somalia's waters.
"The problem is that the pirates are no longer just attacking ships off the Somalian coast but are going further east and south where there is no naval protection," Noel Choong, head of the International Maritime Bureau piracy reporting centre in Kuala Lumpur told AFP.
"Previously the pirates were attacking off southern Somalia but now you are seeing attacks 400 to 500 miles (640 to 800 kilometres) from the Kenyan coast, where they are targeting ships, and they are going even as far off as Tanzania, which is further south."
Heavily-armed pirates set a Dutch container ship ablaze in an unsuccessful attack off Tanzania on Saturday, the IMB said.
"So it is clear that the pirates are expanding their base of operations and operational area," Choong told AFP on Monday, adding that the pirates are becoming bolder and more dangerous.
"We find it very disturbing that they are going so far out of their operational area, encroaching in waters at least two countries away."
"The fact that they can attack 450 nautical miles (830 kilometres) east of Dar Es Salaam is very worrying."
The heavily-armed pirates, many of them former fishermen who accuse French and Spanish tuna fleets of having exhausted local fish stocks, prey on ships along a key route leading to the Red Sea through which one-third of the world's oil transits.
Equipped with high-powered boats, assault rifles and rocket launchers, the pirates have attacked more than 100 ships since the beginning of the year.
Drawn from several local clans on the Somali coast, they are currently holding more than a dozen foreign merchant vessels and their crew in several ports along the Indian Ocean coast.
Their biggest prize to date, the Saudi supertanker Sirius Star, was hijacked off the Kenyan coast on November 15, before being taken to the Somali port of Harardhere where it remains the subject of tense ransom negotiations.
The challenge facing the EUNAVFOR Atalanta mission is enormous, even before the pirates' southward migration is taken into account.
Out of the 80 attacks reported in the past three months alone, half of them occurred in or around the so-called corridor which merchant vessels have been encouraged to use in order to benefit from navy protection.
"You would need at least 100 naval ships in the area to make a decisive impact but this is impossible," said Jean Duval of French maritime security firm Secopex.
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