Three ships to fight pirates off Somalia

China will send two destroyers and a supply vessel to the seas off Somalia to back international efforts to fight piracy, the official Xinhua news agency quoted the defence ministry as saying yesterday.

Foreign Ministry spokesman Liu Jianchao said the taskforce would patrol the Gulf of Aden and waters off Somalia, Xinhua said.

The ships will depart from Sanya in the southern province of Hainan on Friday, in what would be the first operation of its kind for Beijing. Nato ships began anti-piracy operations off the Somali coast in late October, but they have failed to stop the hijackings, and other nations are now pitching in.

A multilateral force rescued the Chinese ship, Zhenhua 4, from Somali pirates last Wednesday. Piracy in the Gulf of Aden and Indian Ocean off Somalia has pushed up insurance costs and forced some ships to take alternative routes.