The Pentagon is to study ways of combating pirates terrorizing seas off the coast of Somalia, a spokesman said Wednesday, stressing a military solution was not the only one.
"We are going to be looking at this in the days ahead in terms of additional things that we can do," said Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman.
A US-led task force is already operating in the region in a bid to halt a spate of attacks by pirates.
"There are more a dozen countries that have contributed to this Task Force, perhaps in the days ahead we may see more countries or more assets being applied there," Whitman said.
"We are going to look at this from a security standpoint and see if there are things that we can do," he said, adding there were "no such plans" as putting military personnel aboard commercial ships.
"Regardless of how many resources you put out there, it is still going to be difficult to be everywhere. You could have 600 ships out there and still not be everywhere," Whitman said.
Late Tuesday Somali pirates attacked an American freighter with rockets to "destroy" the ship in revenge for an operation that freed a US captain last weekend, one of their commanders said Wednesday.
The freighter escaped the attack late Tuesday, but more vessels have fallen into the hands of marauding Somali bandits. A French warship meanwhile intercepted a pirate "mother ship" and arrested 11 gunmen, the French defense ministry said.
Whitman said the problem had to be addressed "on a multitude of levels, one of them is maritime operations to discourage that activity, others are the evasive actions of the crew to prevent their ship from being hijacked."
He was speaking as US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton unveiled a four-point plan to fight piracy that calls for freezing pirates' assets and for concerned countries to prosecute them.
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