NATO forces rescue 20 who were held by pirates

NAIROBI, Kenya - NATO forces rescued 20 fishermen from pirates who launched the latest attack in the Gulf of Aden yesterday but let the Somalian hijackers go because they had no authority to arrest them.

The release underscored the difficulties of stopping the piracy scourge in the Horn of Africa, where bandits also seized a Belgian-flagged ship carrying 10 foreign crew near the Seychelles islands and started hauling it toward Somalia.

"There isn't a silver bullet," said Roger Middleton, a piracy expert at London-based think tank Chatham House. He said it was common for patrolling warships to disarm and then free brigands because they rarely had jurisdiction to try them.

Pirate attacks have increased in recent weeks, with fishermen-turned-gunmen from Somalia searching for targets farther out to sea as ships try to avoid the anarchic, clan-ruled nation.

Pirates have attacked more than 80 vessels this year.

Yesterday's first attack occurred before dawn, when pirates hijacked the Belgian-flagged Pompei a few hundred miles north of the Seychelles, said Portuguese Lt. Cmdr. Alexandre Santos Fernandes, who is traveling with a NATO fleet patrolling farther north in the Gulf of Aden.

Belgian officials said the ship sounded three alarms, indicating it was under attack, as it headed toward the palm-fringed islands, a high-end tourist destination, with a cargo of concrete and stones. The dredging ship had 10 crew members.

As pirates steered the ship northwest toward Somalia, 430 miles away, a Spanish military ship, a French frigate, and a French scout ship were all steaming toward the area to try to intercept it.

In a second attack yesterday, pirates on a small white skiff fired small arms and rockets at a Marshall Islands-flagged tanker. Fernandes said the Handytankers Magic issued a distress call shortly after dawn but escaped using "speed and maneuvers."

A Dutch frigate from the NATO force responded immediately and trailed the pirates to a Yemeni-flagged fishing dhow the brigands had seized Thursday, Fernandes said.

The pirates climbed into the dhow and Dutch marine commandos followed soon after, freeing 20 fishermen whose nationalities were not known. Fernandes said that there was no exchange of fire and that Dutch forces seized seven automatic weapons and one rocket-propelled grenade launcher.

Seven Somalian pirates were briefly detained, but they were soon released because "NATO does not have any detainment policy," Fernandes said. Another reason the pirates could not be arrested: They were seized by Dutch nationals and the pirates, the victims, and the ship were not Dutch, he said.