Mombasa, Kenya, May 05 2006 – The United Nations and Kenya on Friday inaugurated a maritime crisis centre here to respond to the growing threat to commercial shipping posed by pirates off the coast of Somalia.

The emergency operations centre in Kenya's Indian Ocean port of Mombasa is the first of its kind in the region and will respond to vessels either threatened by pirates or suffering other difficulties, officials said.

The project, funded by Nairobi and the UN's International Maritime Organisation (IMO), was launched as increasingly brazen gunmen step up attacks on vessels plying the unpatrolled Somali coast, they said.

Kenya Maritime Authority (KMA) chairperson Joseph Nguru said the $1,6-million (about R9,7-million) facility would collect data from ships and relay information to warships, including from the United States, in nearby waters.

"In the event of piracy, we shall now be able to receive distress signals from ships, at which point we would alert the Kenyan Navy as well as coalition forces operating in the region to act," he told AFP.

"We will be able to keep a 24-hour watch on ships and other marine vessels in our jurisdiction and provide necessary assistance upon receiving information about incidents requiring such assistance," Nguru said.

The centre is equipped with state-of-the-art maritime communications technology donated by the IMO, officials said.

It will monitor the Indian Ocean coastline from Somalia, Seychelles, Kenya and Tanzania and be linked with a similar facility in Cape Town, South Africa, they said.

The inauguration of the centre came a day after Kenyan President Mwai Kibaki met in Nairobi with IMO chief Efthimios Mitropoulos and pledged his country's full assistance in combating piracy off the Somali coast.

Somalia has had no functioning central administration since the 1991 ouster of strongman Mohamed Siad Barre, and pirates have increasingly taken advantage of the lack of authority to prey along the 3   700km coast.

The International Maritime Bureau (IMB) has reported at least 41 attacks on ships off the Somali coast since mid-March of last year.

The attacks - the most recent of which was late last month - have continued despite interventions by US warships, including one in which a pirate vessel and 10 gunmen were captured in January. -

Source: Sapa-AFP