Japan’s largest warship to visit Sri Lanka
Japan plans to dispatch its largest warship on a three-month tour through the South China Sea beginning in May, three sources said, in its biggest show of naval force in the region since World War Two.
China claims almost all the disputed waters and its growing military presence has fuelled concern in Japan and the West, with the United States holding regular air and naval patrols to ensure freedom of navigation.
The Izumo helicopter carrier, commissioned only two years ago, will make stops in Singapore, Indonesia, the Philippines and Sri Lanka before joining the Malabar joint naval exercise with Indian and US naval vessels in the Indian Ocean in July.
It will return to Japan in August, the sources said.
“The aim is to test the capability of the Izumo by sending it out on an extended mission,” said one of the sources who have knowledge of the plan. “It will train with the US Navy in the South China Sea,” he added, asking not to be identified because he is not authorized to talk to the media.
A spokesman for Japan’s Maritime Self Defence Force declined to comment.
Taiwan, Malaysia, Vietnam, the Philippines and Brunei also claim parts of the sea which has rich fishing grounds, oil and gas deposits and through which around US$5 trillion of global sea-borne trade passes each year.”
(Channel News Asia)
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Somali pirates are suspected to have hijacked a Sri Lankan-flagged fuel freighter after the ship sent a distress call, turned off its tracking system and altered course for the Somali coast, a piracy expert told Reuters on Tuesday.
If confirmed, Monday’s incident would be the first hijack of a commercial ship by Somali pirates since 2012.
The Dubai-owned Aris 13 is believed to be carrying eight crew, said John Steed of the aid group Oceans Beyond Piracy. Steed, a former British colonel, has worked on piracy for nearly a decade and is in close contact with naval forces tracking the ship.
“The ship reported it was being followed by two skiffs yesterday afternoon. Then it disappeared,” he said.
Aircraft from regional naval force EU Navfor were flying overhead to track the ship’s progress and try to determine what was happening, he said. In their heyday five years ago, Somali pirates terrorised sailors crossing the Gulf of Aden.
They launched 237 attacks off the coast of Somalia in 2011, the International Maritime Bureau says, and held hundreds of hostages. But attacks fell sharply after ship owners tightened security and avoided the Somali coast. Interventions by regional naval forces that flooded into the area helped disrupt several hijack bids and secure the strategic trade route that leads through the Suez Canal and links the oilfields of the Middle East with European ports.
WE NEED GR AS DEFENCE SEC AND THE MARINE SECURITY COMPANY THAT HE CREATED.
this is fiction. just because this flew a lankan flag means not it is a lankan freighter. if it was cargo destined to a sl port does not mean that the liability will fall on the sl agents. The recovery of the cargo and the freighter will fall on the principals in, This is yet another story probably a scam to milk the sri lankan perhaps the insured
This is Japanese hegemony; we are an independent nation with our own pot-bellied thug as our Navy Commander.