Chinese sailors backed up by international navies fought off Somali pirates trying to hijack their ship yesterday, one day after the UN authorized land operations against the increasingly bold bandits.
The dramatic high-seas encounter was among a fresh wave of attacks by pirates in the Gulf of Aden, where three other ships were hijacked on Tuesday, as China considered whether to send warships to the pirate-infested waters.
A band of pirates boarded the Chinese-owned vessel Zhenhua 4 yesterday, but the sailors prevented them from invading their crew accommodation for several hours — enough time to seek help from the coalition forces.
“I’m actually very surprised that the crew managed to hold back the pirates. I don’t know how they did it, but they did it,” said Noel Choong, head of the International Maritime Bureau piracy reporting center in Kuala Lumpur.
“Because of this action, the military helicopters came and they managed to chase the pirates away. The pirates on board eventually left the ship and the master is proceeding on his course,” he said.
The rescue of the Chinese crew was the latest successful intervention from the newly created EU naval task force, which took over patrols off the Horn of Africa from NATO on Dec. 8.
But Somali pirates managed to capture three other ships in the Gulf of Aden on Tuesday, said Andrew Mwangura of the Kenyan chapter of the East African Seafarers Assistance Program.
The pirates seized a yacht crewed by just two people and two commercial ships: a cargo vessel and a tug serving as an oil industry support ship, Mwangura said.
Choong also said pirates had hijacked a Turkish cargo ship, a Malaysian tug boat and attacked three other vessels in the Gulf of Aden in the past week.
Deputy Chinese Foreign Minister He Yafei (何亞非) said his country may also send warships to fight piracy off Somalia, in what would be an unprecedented display of naval power far from its shores.
“China is seriously considering sending naval ships to the Gulf of Aden and waters off the Somali coast for escorting operations in the near future,” He was quoted as saying by Xinhua news agency.
The UN Security Council approved a resolution, cosponsored by Belgium, France, Greece, Liberia and South Korea, to give those nations already involved in battling pirates off Somalia a one-year mandate to act against them on land.
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The Central Weather Administration (CWA) yesterday said there are four weather systems in the western Pacific, with one likely to strengthen into a tropical storm and pose a threat to Taiwan. The nascent tropical storm would be named Usagi and would be the fourth storm in the western Pacific at the moment, along with Typhoon Yinxing and tropical storms Toraji and Manyi, the CWA said. It would be the first time that four tropical cyclones exist simultaneously in November, it added. Records from the meteorology agency showed that three tropical cyclones existed concurrently in January in 1968, 1991 and 1992.
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‘SOMETHING SPECIAL’: Donald Trump vowed to reward his supporters, while President William Lai said he was confident the Taiwan-US partnership would continue Donald Trump was elected the 47th president of the US early yesterday morning, an extraordinary comeback for a former president who was convicted of felony charges and survived two assassination attempts. With a win in Wisconsin, Trump cleared the 270 electoral votes needed to clinch the presidency. As of press time last night, The Associated Press had Trump on 277 electoral college votes to 224 for US Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic Party’s nominee, with Alaska, Arizona, Maine, Michigan and Nevada yet to finalize results. He had 71,289,216 votes nationwide, or 51 percent, while Harris had 66,360,324 (47.5 percent). “We’ve been through so
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