The United States needs to shift its approach to fighting Somali pirates by applying techniques used to combat terrorism, as the armed gangs move further out to sea, says a US Navy commander.Pirates are making tens of millions of dollars in ransoms from seizing merchant ships in the Gulf of Aden and increasingly in the Indian Ocean, despite efforts of foreign navies to clamp down on attacks.
The number of hostages is also rising sharply, jumping from around 350 in September to some 750 today, according to the US Military. Vice Admiral Mark Fox, the head of US naval forces in the turbulent region, said he was investigating possible links between pirates and Somali-based insurgents linked to al Qaeda but acknowledged he had no "explicit" ties.
Regardless, he believed that some of the pre-emptive techniques used to battle militants should be used to combat pirates, particularly the aggressive approach to tracking terrorist funding. He suggested the link between pirates and militants might be financial, Reuters reports.
