Indian navy holds 61 pirates after foiling hijack attempt

Five dozen pirates living on a hijacked ship serving as a roving base jumped into the Arabian Sea yesterday after the Indian navy fired on the vessel.

Some 61 pirates were captured fleeing the battle and the fire that broke out aboard the hijacked vessel after it took hits from the Indian warships.

The Indian navy said a patrol aircraft spotted the "mothership" on Friday while responding to another vessel reporting a pirate attack. The pirates aborted the hijacking attempt and tried to escape on the mothership.

When the Indian ships closed in on Sunday night, the pirates fired on them. The hijacked vessel caught fire when the Indian navy returned fire, the navy said.

The pirates hijacked the Mozambique-flagged Vega 5 in December and were using it as a base. Indian sailors rescued 13 crew members from the vessel on Sunday, about 700 miles off Kochi in southern India.

The pirates were carrying about 80 to 90 small arms and a few heavier weapons, including rocket-propelled grenades, according to the Indian navy. Its statement did not describe any casualties among the navy, the fishermen or the pirates.

The pirates were being taken to Mumbai to be prosecuted.

Piracy has plagued the shipping industry off East Africa for years, but violence and ransom demands have escalated in recent months. Pirates held some 30 ships and more than 660 hostages as of February.

Bile Hussein, a self-described pirate in Somalia, said the arrests will lead to "trouble" for Indian sailors and ships.

"They better release them, considering their people travelling in the waters, or we shall jail their people like that," he said.

"We are first sending a message to the Indian government of releasing our friends in their hands or else they have to be ready for their citizens to be mistreated in the near future."

The Indian navy's third anti-piracy operation this year followed the capture of 28 Somali pirates last month and another 15 in January.

Indian warships have been escorting merchant ships as part of international anti-piracy surveillance in the area since 2008.

Several nations are prosecuting pirate suspects captured by their militaries.But other suspects have been released as countries weigh legal issues and other factors.

The prosecutions, the growth of criminal gangs participating in piracy and the ever-increasing ransoms have heightened confrontations.

Five Puntland security forces and two pirates were killed earlier this month during a failed attempt to rescue Danish captives taken from their hijacked yacht to a pirate stronghold in the semi-autonomous northern region of Somalia.

Weeks earlier, four Americans on a hijacked yacht were killed by pirates under circumstances that are still unclear.

Four US Navy vessels were shadowing the captured boat at the time, and 15 pirate suspects were taken into custody after the gunfire.

Pirate representatives announced this weekend that they were reducing their ransom demands for captured vessels, as they had seized so many ships it was costing too much to guard them all.