NATO ships en route for anti-piracy mission off Somalia

BRUSSELS, Oct. 15 (Xinhua) -- Seven NATO ships are transiting through the Suez Canal to conduct anti-piracy patrols off Somalia and visit NATO partner nations in the Gulf, the alliance said Wednesday.

Details of how the group will conduct the anti-piracy mission and carry out a number of port visits are still being finalized, NATO spokesman James Appathurai told a briefing.

The seven ships are from Britain, Germany, Greece, Italy, Turkey and the United States. The group is composed of two destroyers, four frigates and one auxiliary ship, said the spokesman.

At the request of UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, NATO defense ministers last week agreed to send warships to the coast of Somalia to escort World Food Program (WFP) food shipments to Somalians.

Apart from escorting the WFP shipments, the NATO warships will also patrol the waters to deter acts of piracy.

Rampant piracy on the waters is making food shipments impossible without escorts. At the same time the WFP shipments arecrucial as over 40 percent of the Somali population depends on WFP food aid