Spain on Friday took over from Britain command of a European Union maritime mission that combats piracy off the coast of Somalia as Britain's planned departure from the bloc nears.

Spanish vice admiral Antonio Martorell relieved British major general Charlie Strickland as commander of the so-called "Operation Atalanta" during a solemn ceremony held at the Rota naval base in southern Spain, where US troop are also stationed.

The ceremony was held on the day Britain was originally set to leave the European Union. British lawmakers voted down an unpopular divorce deal for a third time on Friday.

"It is honestly a sad day for the UK ...but it is an exciting day for Spain," Strickland said during the ceremony.

"Atalanta is so much more than ships in the Indian Ocean and aircrafts in the skies. Atalanta is a sophisticated multilayered operation using hard and soft power to continue to suppress piracy and to take a powerful role in the broader security architecture of this key region of the world."

The European Council announced in July that it would transfer the headquarters of Atalanta which employs 101 people from Northwood outside of London to Rota.

The operation's headquarters is just one of the European institutions which Britain is losing as a result of its impending EU exit.

The European Medicines Agency moved to Amsterdam hile the European Banking Authority was relocated to Paris.

While Spain took over the Atalanta's command centre, France's historic naval base in Brest on the tip of Brittany won the Maritime Security Centre of Africa which was also based in Northwood.

The EU launched Atalanta in 2008 to fight brazen acts of piracy off the coast of Somalia, including the spectacular hijacking of a Spanish tuna boat in 2009.

The number of attacks off the coast of Somalia in the Indian Ocean has fallen from a peak of 176 in 2011 to just two in 2018, according to Atalanta.

The European Union has extended Operation Atalanta to 2020 and gave it a budget of 12 million euros for 2019 and 2020.

Italy had also sought to win the headquarters of Atalanta. It had proposed that it be moved to a base in Rome which already holds the headquarters of Operation Sophia against smugglers of migrants in the central Mediterranean.

Five arrested after Maltese military seizes tanker hijacked by migrants
Valletta (AFP) March 28, 2019 - Five men were arrested Thursday after Maltese armed forces took control of a tanker that was hijacked by migrants off Libya and the ship docked in Malta.

The Palau-flagged tanker Elhiblu I had picked up 108 migrants including women and children on Tuesday evening and then headed back to Tripoli.

But six nautical miles from port the ship suddenly changed course and headed north toward Europe.

Italy's far-right Interior Minister Matteo Salvini said Wednesday the vessel had been hijacked and vowed that the migrants would not be allowed to disembark in Italy.

The 52-metre (170-foot) tanker was about 30 nautical miles from Malta when the Armed Forces of Malta (AFM) established communications with the captain.

"The captain repeatedly stated that he was not in control of the vessel and that he and his crew were being forced and threatened by a number of migrants to proceed to Malta," the AFM said in a statement on Thursday morning.

"AFM Patrol Vessel P21 stopped the tanker from entering Maltese territorial waters.

"An AFM Special Operations Unit team was dispatched to board and secure the vessel in order to hand over control of the ship to the captain."

Escorted by the Maltese navy, the tanker arrived in the port of Valletta around 8:30 am (0730 GMT).

Five men suspected of having been the leaders of the hijacking were arrested, handcuffed and taken away in a police van.

The women and children disembarked next, followed by the other men, many of whom appeared physically very weak.

Maltese Prime Minister Joseph Muscat commented that his country does "not shirk responsibility despite our size," Malta being the smallest EU country of around 450,000 people.

"We will now follow all international rules accordingly," he added.

- 'People are very upset' -

Both before and after the hijacking, the German charity Sea-Eye, whose ship Alan Kurdi was in the rescue zone off Libya, said it had overheard radio messages between a European military aircraft and the captain of the tanker.

"The captain of the ship rescued the people and requested assistance. He said unequivocally on the radio that people are very upset and do not want to be brought back to Libya," Sea-Eye said in a statement.

"Tripoli, however, was the destination port of the cargo ship."

Migrants in chaos-wracked Libya face trafficking, kidnap, torture and rape, according to the United Nations and aid groups.

Following Rome's increasingly tough anti-migrant stance, vessels that pick up migrants making the perilous journey across the Mediterranean increasingly return them to Libya.

Boatloads of rescued migrants have in recent months refused to disembark in Libya, prompting the authorities there to use force.

The UNHCR's special envoy for the central Mediterranean, Vincent Cochetel, tweeted Thursday that the "safety of crews (is) as important as safety of human beings fleeing a hellish situation & not wanting to return there.

"With a robust rescue at sea capacity & predictable disembarkation on both sides of the Med, this would not have happened."

The European Union announced on Wednesday it will suspend ship patrols that have rescued tens of thousands of migrants in the Mediterranean and brought them to Italy, in the face of deep resistance from Rome's populist government.

Migrant arrivals from North Africa and the Middle East have been sharply reduced since a 2015 peak when Europe faced its worst migration crisis since World War II.

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Sudan says Turkish naval ship to boost 'Red Sea security'
Khartoum (AFP) March 9, 2019
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