Indian Navy takes out a pirate ship!

NEW DELHI — As negotiations started for the release of a Saudi-owned supertanker seized by pirates off Somalia, the Indian Navy said on Wednesday that one of its warships fought a battle at sea with would-be hijackers in the Gulf of Aden, sinking one suspect vessel and forcing the pirates to abandon a second as they fled.
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Times Topics: Piracy at Sea


The New York Times







The drama on the night-time waters of the Indian Ocean late Tuesday underscored the growing international concern at the audacity with which armed pirates, mostly based in Somalia, range across vast areas of the Indian Ocean and the Gulf of Aden, attacking at will.
The enormous Saudi-owned supertanker, Sirius Star, remained at anchor off the coast of Somalia on Wednesday, but there was no immediate word on the status of negotiations for its release.
In Rome, Prince Saud al-Faisal, the Saudi foreign minister, confirmed that the owners of the Star “are negotiating on the issue” and were “the final arbiter of the issue”, despite the Saudi government’s official opposition to such discussions with “pirates, terrorists or hijackers,” according to news reports. But he did not elaborate.
The ship is owned by Vela International, a subsidiary of the Saudi Arabia-based oil giant Saudi Aramco. At 1,080 feet, it is the largest ship known to have been seized by pirates. Its 25-member crew is made up of personnel from Britain, Poland, Croatia, the Philippines and Saudi Arabia. The supertanker, about the same length as an American Nimitz class aircraft carrier, is fully loaded with two million barrels of oil valued at around $100 million. In a statement on Wednesday, Cmdr. Nirad Kumar Sinha, a spokesman for the Indian Navy, said an Indian warship, the INS Tabar, encountered a flotilla of three pirate vessels some 320 miles south west of the Omani coast in the Gulf of Aden in a separate incident on Tuesday evening.
One ship was apparently a “mother ship” used by pirates to extend their range, with two speedboats in tow. The suspect vessel matched the description of a pirate vessel issued by international anti-piracy authorities, Commander Sinha said.
He said the ‘“whole operation lasted four to five hours” and was “the first such incident in which the Indian Navy sank the pirates’ mother ship.”
When the Indian vessel tried to halt the ship, he said, “the vessel’s threatening response was that she would blow up the naval warship” if it came closer.
“Pirates were seen roaming on the upper deck of this vessel with guns and rocket propelled grenade launchers,” Commander Sinha said. “The vessel continued its threatening calls and subsequently fired upon INS Tabar. On being fired upon, INS Tabar retaliated in self-defense and opened fire on the mother vessel.”
“As a result of the firing by INS Tabar, fire broke out on the vessel and explosions were heard, possibly due to exploding ammunition that was stored on the vessel. Almost simultaneously, two speedboats were observed breaking off to escape. The ship chased the first boat which was later found abandoned. The other boat made good its escape into darkness,” he said. There was no immediate word on casualties among the pirates.
The Indian account suggested that pirates had attacked the Tabar, deployed to repulse pirates — equaling the brazenness of the hijacking on Sunday of the Sirius Star.
At least eight ships have been hijacked in a vast expanse of ocean off the east African coastline in the past two weeks.
On the same day the Indian Navy engaged the pirates, a cargo ship registered in Hong Kong and loaded with 36,000 tons of wheat was seized in the Gulf of Aden, the official Chinese news agency Xinhua reported. The vessel, with 25 crew aboard, was headed for the Iranian port of Bandar Abbas.
That hijacking was followed by a report Wednesday, still to be confirmed by Greek authorities, that a Greek bulk carrier had also been seized in the Gulf of Aden. A regional maritime group based in Mombasa, Kenya, told Reuters 23 to 25 crew were aboard that ship. The Associated Press also reported that a Thai fishing boat with 16 crew members had been seized off the coast of Somalia on Tuesday.
International anti-piracy patrols, deployed since August, have had occasional success