Navy repulses attack on ship, nabs 23 pirates

Continuing with its successful run against sea pirates, a Navy warship on Saturday drove away a group of sea brigands that attacked a merchant vessel off the Gulf of Aden and apprehended 23 of them.

In a strong display of its prowess in the global fight against the menace of piracy threatening maritime trade near Horn of Africa, Indian Navy's guided missile destroyer INS Mysore repulsed the pirate attack on Ethiopian flag-bearing MV Gibe that was sailing 150 nautical miles off Aden in Yemen around noon, a Navy spokesperson said in New Delhi.

This is the fourth offensive against pirates carried out by an Indian Navy ship since November 11, when an Indian and a Saudi merchant vessel came under attack from the outlaws.

The pirates on three speed boats had surrounded MV Gibe and had fired a couple of rounds at the ship with their rifles, when it sent out a distress signal, he said.

INS Mysore, a 6,900-tonne destroyer of the Delhi class, was about 13 nautical miles from the beleaguered cargo ship and it rushed its marine commandos on an helicopter to the merchant vessel.

The Naval commandos launched an attack on the two pirate boats and the outlaws fled from the scene abandoning their effort to hijack the merchant vessel.

Soon after, the naval helicopter chased the speed boats and marine commandos boarded two of them to nab 12 Somali and 11 Yemeni pirates.

They also seized seven AK-47s, one each of 5.76 and 7.62 rifles, a rocket propelled grenade launcher, and 13 fully-loaded magazines of ammunition from the apprehended pirates.

After the successful counter attack on the pirates, INS Mysore later escorted MV Gibe to safety, the Navy spokesperson said.

It also launched further search for some of the pirates who escaped after the launch of the marine commando operation. Indian Navy has also sought assistance from warships of other countries deployed on anti-piracy patrols in the Gulf of Aden to catch the runaway brigands, he said.

New Delhi had taken a serious view of piracy-related incidents in the Gulf of Aden, the primary sea lane for global maritime trade to and fro oil-rich West Asia, following the abduction of MV Stolt Valor, which had 18 Indian sailors on board, by Somali pirates from the region on September 15 this year.

On October 23, India gave a go-ahead to the Navy's request for a pro-active approach to counter the outlaws operating with audacity in the region along the Horn of Africa.

The Navy rushed its stealth frigate INS Tabar, which was already deployed nearby to Gulf of Aden on November 2 and since then it rescued an Indian vessel MV Jag Arnav and a Saudi cargo ship on November 11 and also sunk a pirate 'mother ship' on November 19.

The 'first kill', as Navy chief Admiral Sureesh Mehta had later described the sinking, turned out to be a Thai fishing trawler under the pirates' control carrying a lot of ammunition and it went up in flames after INS Tabar fired at it in retaliation.