NORTHWOOD, England, Aug. 17 (UPI) -- The fight against Somali pirates by an international coalition continues.
Italy has dispatched the warship ITS Libeccio frigate to join Operation Atalanta in combating piracy off the Somali coast, the EU Naval Force Somalia said Tuesday in a news release.
The ITS Libeccio has begun patrolling in the Somali Gulf of Aden to provide escort for vessels of the World Food Program and African Union Mission in Somalia ships to guard them against piracy.
While the ITS Libeccio was initially assigned to patrol the Somali coastline to gather intelligence on potential pirate activities, the warship was subsequently reassigned to escort a WFP ship sailing from Kenya's Mombasa port to Somalia's Mogadishu and an AMISIOM cargo ship voyaging from Mombasa to Somalia's Berbera port.
The European Union's Naval Force Somalia-Operation Atalanta began a year ago to support U.N. Security Council Resolutions 1814, 1816, 1838 and 1846, passed in 2008. Operation Atalanta's mission was to protection WFP vessels delivering food aid to displaced persons in Somalia, protect merchantmen traversing the Gulf of Aden and the Somali coast and to use all necessary measures, including force, to deter, prevent and intervene in piratical attacks, while also monitoring illegal fishery activities by foreign ships in Somali territorial waters as well as its 200-mile Exclusive Economic Zone. UPI
