Topic: Piracy Threat Curbing Food Aid To Somalia

Washington Post
May 22, 2007
Pg. 10
By Associated Press
MOGADISHU, Somalia, May 21 -- Operators of a cargo ship carrying food for poor Somalis refused to send it on its voyage Monday because of rampant piracy, and the U.S. Navy warned vessels to stay clear of Somalia's lawless waters, where aid workers and fishermen have become targets.
The U.N. World Food Program has appealed for international action to stamp out Somali pirates threatening the delivery of humanitarian supplies to the Horn of Africa country, which is trying to recover from the worst fighting in more than a decade.
The aid ship, now in Kenya, was loaded with 850 tons of food, but the shipping agency contracted by the U.N. program demanded that the Kenyan government provide security for travel into Somali waters. On Saturday, pirates attempted to hijack another World Food Program boat, killing a Somali guard.
Saturday's attack was the eighth this year off Somalia's 1,880-mile coast, which is near crucial shipping routes connecting the Red Sea to the Indian Ocean.
Trained in combat during the anarchy that has gripped Somalia since the 1991 ouster of a dictatorship, the pirates are heavily armed and use speedboats equipped with satellite phones and global navigation devices.
"Although there are coalition forces operating in the area, they cannot be everywhere monitoring every ship that passes the coast of Somalia," the U.S. Navy's Maritime Liaison Office in Bahrain said in a statement. It urged ships to stay 230 miles off Somalia's coast.
In 2005, two ships carrying World Food Program aid were overwhelmed by pirates. The number of reported at-sea hijackings off Somalia that year was 35, compared with two in 2004, according to the International Maritime Bureau.
A U.N.-backed government, which has been struggling to exert control since 2004, is battling an extremist Islamic movement that Somali troops removed from the capital, Mogadishu, late last year with help from neighboring Ethiopia. On Monday, Ethiopian soldiers killed one person and injured another after their convoy was targeted by a land mine in Mogadishu, witnesses said.