China prepares to send navy to Gulf of Aden

Beijing: China is all set to send a naval fleet on a mission to fight pirates in Somali waters, a military source told China Daily on Tuesday.

‘‘There will be a significant peacekeeping operation (in Somalia),’ the source said, but did not reveal the scale of the mission. “The Chinese government supports the international community’s decision to cooperate on the piracy problem according to international law and the UN Security Council’s resolutions,” Liu Jianchao told a news briefing on Tuesday, referring to Vice-Foreign Minister He Yafei’s meeting in New York. A local newspaper provided some details of the planned mission. “The fleet will leave the South China Sea and head to the Gulf of Aden and Somali waters,” the Global Times reported yesterday.

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World’s largest floating dock put into operation

The world’s largest floating dock, ‘China Shipping Emei Mountain’ was recently put into operation during a ceremony held in China to celebrate its completion.

‘The dock was built by China Shipping Industrial Co, a subsidiary of the China Shipping Group. The new dock was immediately put to work in Shanghai at the China Shipping Changzing repair base, with the hope of strengthening market competitiveness in China.

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UN greenlights Somali land ops as two more ships are hijacked

New York: The UN Security Council unanimously adopted a resolution for the first time authorizing international land operations against the pirates sheltering in Somalia.

‘The text, co-sponsored by the US, Belgium, France, Greece, Liberia and South Korea, gives those nations already involved in battling pirates off Somalia a one-year mandate to act against the brigands inside the country. Resolution 1851 authorizes the states to “take all necessary measures that are appropriate in Somalia” to suppress “acts of piracy and armed robbery at sea.” However, to overcome objections from countries such as Indonesia an earlier reference in the text to “ashore” or “including in its (Somalia) airspace” was dropped. Pirates on Wednesday hijacked a Turkish cargo ship and a Malaysian tug boat and attacked three other vessels in the Gulf of Aden in the past week, a global maritime watchdog said. The latest incidents came as a European Union naval task force took over from a NATO operation patrolling the pirate-infested seas near the Horn of Africa with six warships and three surveillance planes. In the first hijacking, pirates armed with rocket-propelled grenades and automatic weapons boarded a Malaysian tug on Tuesday, Noel Choong, head of the International Maritime Bureau piracy reporting centre in Kuala Lumpur told AFP. The tug with 11 crew on board was heading to Malaysia from the Middle East. Choong said a Turkish cargo ship was hijacked, also in the Gulf of Aden on Tuesday, by a gang of pirates who fired automatic weapons from two speed boats.

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