Somalia’s maritime police force on Thursday intensified patrols in the Red Sea following a failed pirate hijacking of a ship in the Gulf of Aden earlier this week.

The commander of the maritime force in the semiautonomous region of Puntland, Abdullahi Mohamed Ahmed said that patrols in the waters had doubled and were on a 24-hour rotation to deter pirates. “We have many challenges here. We had initially dealt with the pirates and stopped their activities, but recently on top of al-Shabab and IS we have had to look out for them again,” he said.