The Indian Navy announced on Monday that it had freed an Iranian fishing boat that had been hijacked by pirates off the coast of Somalia in the Indian Ocean, an area seeing a surge in piracy.
“The fishing boat was boarded by pirates and the crew was taken hostage
,” said Vivek Madhwal, spokesperson for the Indian navy.
The Indian warship INS Sumitra
“obtained the release of the 17 crew members as well as the boat”
bearing the name
“Iman”
and flying the Iranian flag, he detailed.
The Indian Navy ship was on patrol off the coast of Somalia in the Gulf of Aden when it received a distress message from the fishing boat.
He
“intercepted the ship”
and then tried to
“coerce”
the pirates into releasing the crew and the boat, Vivek Madhwal said.
The fishing boat was
“secured and released to continue its transit
,” the navy said, without giving further details on the operation or the fate of the pirates.
Attacks in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden
Yemen's Iran-backed Houthi rebels have launched numerous attacks in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden, targeting ships linked to Israel, in response to the war in Gaza against the Palestinian militant group Hamas.
International naval forces have in response moved from the northern Gulf of Aden to the Red Sea, sparking fears of a resurgence of piracy in this less secure area.
A Somali pirate attack was reported in December, for the first time since 2017.
Pirate attacks off the coast of Somalia peaked in 2011, with operations launched as far as 3,500 kilometers from the Somali coast in the Indian Ocean, before declining sharply in recent years.
Suspected Somali pirates on Saturday boarded and hijacked a Sri Lankan fishing trawler, the Lorenzo Putha-4, with six crew members, some 840 nautical miles southeast of the Somali capital Mogadishu, the navy said Sri Lankan.
On December 16, Somali pirates hijacked the bulk carrier MV Ruen, a Bulgarian ship flying the Maltese flag, 380 nautical miles east of the Yemeni island of Socotra.
The pirates, who handed over an injured sailor to the Indian Navy, took the MV Ruen and its 17 remaining crew members to Somalia's semi-autonomous Puntland state.