India's navy sinks pirate ship
Officials say the vessel, told to stop, replied with threats. A fight ensued. It was a rare victory.
NEW DELHI - An Indian navy frigate sank a suspected pirate "mother ship" in the Gulf of Aden, one of the world's busiest and most lawless shipping lanes.
The Indian navy said in a statement yesterday that fire from INS Tabar set the pirate vessel aflame after it failed to stop for investigation.
It said the crew of the renegade vessel could be seen on board with modern weapons and tools - satellite phones, night-vision goggles, AK-47 assault rifles, and rocket-propelled grenade launchers.
The statement gave this account of the encounter:
The Tabar was patrolling 325 miles southwest of Oman when it spotted the suspicious vessel.
The Tabar ordered the vessel to stop, but it responded by threatening to "blow up the naval warship if it closed on her" and then fired on the Tabar. The Indian warship responded.
The Indian gunfire sparked fires and a series of onboard blasts and the pirate ship sank. Two pirate speedboats raced into the darkness.
One was later found abandoned. The other escaped. An unknown number of people died on the mother ship, the Indian statement said.
Last week, in another rare victory over the pirates, helicopter-borne Indian marine commandos stopped hijackers from boarding an Indian merchant vessel in the area.
About 40 ships have been hijacked this year off Somalia, a country that has not had a functioning national government since 1991 and that has suffered continuing chaos and rule by small factions.
The overnight battle in the Gulf of Aden - the gateway to the Red Sea and the Suez Canal and the main shipping route from Asia and the Middle East to Europe - came days after the Saudi supertanker Sirius Star was seized along with 25 crew members.
It is the biggest vessel ever hijacked and is carrying two million barrels of oil - a quarter of Saudi Arabia's daily output, valued at $100 million.
Asked about reports that a ransom was being negotiated, the Saudi foreign minister, Prince Saud al-Faisal, said yesterday in Rome that the owners of the tanker "are negotiating on the issue."
The pirates typically demand more than $1 million per vessel. Negotiations between pirates and shipowners have taken months at times, with the hijacked crews held captive in Somalia until a deal is reached.
Several countries have deployed naval vessels to the area to fight the pirates. The vessels include three NATO warships in the Gulf of Aden and ships from the U.S. Navy's Bahrain-based Fifth Fleet.
U.S. Navy Cmdr. Jane Campbell of the Fifth Fleet said naval patrols simply cannot prevent all attacks given that the area they must cover is vast and 21,000 vessels pass through the Gulf of Aden every year.
White House press secretary Dana Perino said that Washington was working with other members of the U.N. Security Council to find more effective actions against piracy.
Private shipping companies should also do more to protect their vessels and not just rely on the world's armed forces, Pentagon spokesman Geoff Morrell said yesterday.
At least 17 vessels - including a Ukrainian ship loaded with tanks - are still in the hands of pirates along with about 300 crew members, according to the International Maritime Bureau's piracy reporting center in Malaysia.
India has a serious economic interest in ensuring the security of even foreign ships in the Gulf of Aden's shipping lanes. About 85 percent of its sea trade on the route is carried by foreign-owned ships.