{"id":75007,"date":"2016-10-13T16:46:00","date_gmt":"2016-10-13T16:46:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mostafa.openonline.co.uk\/?guid=ab79678e337f3ea6b9137aabd70fe030"},"modified":"2016-10-13T16:46:00","modified_gmt":"2016-10-13T16:46:00","slug":"news-story-rfa-mounts-bay-resumes-arms-trafficking-patrol","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mostafa.openonline.co.uk\/?p=75007","title":{"rendered":"News story: RFA Mounts Bay resumes arms trafficking patrol"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"govspeak\">\n<p>The Royal Fleet Auxiliary takes over from HMS Diamond, who carried out the role for two months while Mounts Bay underwent planned maintenance, as well as playing a role in a joint maritime exercise Albanian Lion earlier this month.<\/p>\n<p>The Type 45 Destroyer has conducted wide-area maritime surveillance to establish operating patterns in the area and then, when appropriate, boarded vessels suspected of supporting the illegal importation of weapons and ammunition.<\/p>\n<p>This forms part of Operation Sophia, focused on tackling human smugglers and arms traffickers who endanger the lives of migrants who seek to travel to Europe.<\/p>\n<p>Mounts Bay\u2019s role will remain tackling the movement of arms, and she will provide a picture-building capability to help enforce the UN Security Council Resolution prohibiting the trafficking of arms to Libya.<\/p>\n<p>During her two months in the role, Diamond deployed combined Royal Navy and Royal Marine boarding teams, and her Wildcat helicopter provided critical over watch; the first time the helicopter has been utilised in a live operation from a Type 45.<\/p>\n<p>Commander Marcus Hember, Commanding Officer of HMS Diamond, said:<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p class=\"last-child\">Diamond has made an important contribution to the effort in the Mediterranean, showing that the Royal Navy continues to commit to important tasks in support of UK interests.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>RFA Mounts Bay has resumed duties patrolling the Mediterranean to counter illegal arms trafficking.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mostafa.openonline.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75007"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mostafa.openonline.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mostafa.openonline.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mostafa.openonline.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mostafa.openonline.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=75007"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mostafa.openonline.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75007\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mostafa.openonline.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=75007"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mostafa.openonline.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=75007"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mostafa.openonline.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=75007"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}