Friday, September 26, 2008

Russia sending heavily-armed patrol ship to Somali coast to combat piracy

This is what modern day pirates look like. They will attack a ship and steal the cargo or hold the ship or crew for ransom. They can get hundreds of thousands of dollars for both the ship and crew. Well, they decided to attack a Ukrainian ship carrying arms, including 30 tanks and now the Russians are going to take care of this problem the non-politically correct way. They are going to kill them, all of them.

The Russian Navy's central command has sent the patrol ship, Neustrashimy, to the coast of Somalia after pirates seized a Ukranian vessel in the region.
Navy spokesman Captain Igor Dygalo, says the Neustrashimy, which belongs to the Baltic Fleet, has been sent as part of Russia's aim to combat piracy.[...]
The patrol ship Neustrashimy left the Baltic Fleet's main base in Baltiisk on September 24 to ensure a naval presence in oceanic and maritime areas, Captain Dygalo said.
The number of attacks by Somali pirates on civilian vessels belonging to different countries has increased recently.
Pirates hijacked Ukraine's vessel Faina under Belize's flag en route to Kenya in neutral waters not far from Kenya's coast on Thursday (local time).
Some reports indicate that the Ukrainian ship was carrying military hardware, including nearly 30 T-72 tanks and spare parts for armoured hardware.
The patrol ship Neustrashimy is equipped with anti-submarine and air defence missile systems, a 100 millimetre artillery gun, torpedo systems and rocket-assisted bomb launchers.
For the record, piracy as a jihadist activity has a pedigree at least as old as the Barbary conflicts with Europe and the new United States, and the Islamic slave raiding pirates vividly described in Giles Milton's book White Gold.

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