Operation Atalanta, the EU force operating off Somalia, said that last Friday the Spanish warship Navarra located an Iranian fishing dhow, identified as Uaid 400, that had sent out a distress signal.
The Iranian boat had been attacked by pirates four days earlier. The 13-man crew told the Spanish sailors the pirates had looted the vessel, taking their food, water, fuel and personal possessions.
The Spanish resupplied them so they could get to the nearest port.
The day before that encounter, the Italian frigate Scirocco, part of a NATO-led force that is separate from Operation Ata-lanta, came across an Iranian freighter, Saad 1, just off the Somali coast.
Saad 1 had been hijacked five months ago and the 19-man crew held prisoner.
NATO said the pirates set sail in the Saad 1 the previous Sunday, apparently planning to use it as a base from which to attack other shipping. They had the Iranian crew on board to operate the vessel. But the Scirocco came across the Saad 1 not far from the Somali coast. The pirates then decided to abandon the Iranian ship and hightailed it back to port in skiffs. “There was no firefight,” a spokeswoman said. “It was the presence of the Italian ship that made them leave.”
The Iranian Navy, meanwhile, was announcing the dispatch of a new “fleet” of one warship and one supply vessel to protect Iranian vessels in the waters off Somalia. It said nothing about the two Iranian vessels rescued by the Spanish and Italians.
A total of 27 navies have ships operating off Somalia on anti-piracy duty. Twenty-six of those navies coordinate their activities. The Iranian Navy declines to coordinate with the others.
The Associated Press reported last week that the 26 navies have adopted a more aggressive policy and are now operating much closer to the Somali coasts, which probably explains the rescue of the Saad 1. The AP said that in the first half of March, the naval forces intercepted 12 groups of pirate vessels, more than they struck in all of 2009, when they rarely took the initiative to locate pirates but chiefly responded to distress calls from ships under attack.
