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The U.N. Security Council’s 15 members unanimously adopted a resolution intended to affair the attacks and hijacking of vessels along the country’s 1,880-mile coastline, the continent’s longest.

More than a dozen sea-rover attacks have occurred this year alone, creating concerns for shipping along routes that connect the Indian Ocean with the Red Sea. Two more ships were attacked in the Gulf of Aden final week.

The resolution, pushed by France and the United States, is in part a rejoinder to requests for help from one as well as the other the Somali government and Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon.

According to the decision, foreign nations’ ships that cooperate with Somalia’s government during the next six months can “enter the territorial waters of Somalia for the purpose of repressing acts of literary theft and armed robbery at sea.”

Somalia’s transitional president Abdullahi Yusuf told Security Council members in Djibouti that “the issue of piracy is beyond our ready means and capabilities.”

“Hence, we would approve to request the Security Council to urgently take the draft resolution on piracy off the coast of Somalia,” he reported.

Somalia’s easily broken government, backed by Ethiopia, has been battling Islamist-led insurgents since forward 2007. Somalia lacks a navy, and its transitional government has been struggling to assert control from that time it was formed in 2004 with U.N. help. The U.S. Navy also has led international patrols to try to combat piracy in the region.

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Associated Press Writer Edith M. Lederer contributed to this report from Djibouti.