Indian Frigate Destroys 'mothership' As Raids Off Somalia Continue

Somali bandits terrorizing the busy shipping routes around the Horn of Africa suffered a rare setback when an Indian warship destroyed a pirate "mothership" after coming under fire in the Gulf of Aden.

The Indian Navy said that its frigate, one of the numerous international warships dispatched to patrol the waters around the Horn of Africa, had approached a suspicious vessel on Tuesday evening. It turned out to be a previously captured ship being used by pirates as a base to launch their speedboats far out to sea.

"The INS Tabar closed in on the mother vessel and asked her to stop for investigation," an Indian navy spokesman said. "But on repeated calls, the vessel's threatening response was that she would blow up the naval warship if it approached."

After a heavy exchange of fire, the pirate ship was destroyed. Two speedboats escaped.

The naval battle came on a day when pirates seized three other ships: a Greek bulk carrier, a Thai fishing boat and an Iranian-chartered cargo ship carrying 36,000 tonnes of wheat from Germany. The hijackings, which followed the capture at the weekend of the Sirius Star, the Saudi supertanker carrying $100m (£66m) worth of oil bound for the US, sent a powerful message of the pirates' potency.

The 330-meter oil tanker, the largest ship ever to be captured at sea, is reported to be anchored near the town of Harardheere on Somalia's eastern seaboard. Its owner, Vela International, a subsidiary of the state oil company Saudi Aramco, yesterday opened negotiations for a ransom payment, according to Saudi foreign minister Prince Saud al-Faisal.

"I know the owners of the tanker are negotiating on the issue. We do not like to negotiate with terrorists or hijackers. But the owners of the tanker, they are the final arbiters of what happens there," he said.

Demands

The ransom sought will almost certainly run into tens of millions of dollars. The pirates in September captured the Ukrainian ship MV Faina, carrying 33 T-72 tanks, and initially wanted $20m, although they later reduced their demand.

The Faina and its crew are still being held hostage near the north-eastern Somali fishing town of Eyl, together with more than a dozen other vessels with about 220 foreign seamen on board.

Al-Jazeera yesterday broadcast an audio tape featuring what it said was the voice of Farah Abd Jameh, a pirate on the Sirius Star, making his demands.

"Negotiators are located on board the ship and on land," he said. "Once they have agreed on the ransom it will be taken in cash to the oil tanker. We assure the safety of the ship that carries the ransom. We will mechanically count the money and we have machines that can detect fake money." No ransom amount was mentioned, however, and the authenticity of the tape could not be confirmed.

Law and order

While the capture of so many passing cargo vessels makes a mockery of pirates' claims to be protecting the country from foreign exploitation, complaints about illegal fishing in Somali waters are genuine. The Seafarers' Assistance Program in Mombasa says that at any one time there can be hundreds of foreign trawlers, mostly from Europe and the Middle East, fishing within Somalia's 200 nautical mile exclusive economic zone.

Local fishermen say their catches are declining as a result. And while some foreign ships do acquire permits, corrupt officials often pocket the money.

Analysts say that in the long term the key to ending piracy is establishing an effective authority on land in Somalia. In 2006, when the Islamic Courts Union controlled most of southern and central Somalia for six months, bringing in law and order for the first time since the early 1990s, piracy all but disappeared.

But after the Islamists were ousted by invading Ethiopian forces, pirates began to flourish once more. The Transitional Federal Government, headed by President Abdullahi Yusuf Ahmed, exercises no authority on the ground or at sea and claims, with some justification, that it can do little to rein in the pirates.

In an interview with the shipping weekly Fairplay, Royal Navy Commodore Keith Winstanley, deputy commander of the Combined Maritime Forces in the Middle East, explained the difficulties of patrolling Africa's longest coastline. "The pirates will go somewhere we are not. If we patrol the Gulf of Aden then they will go to Mogadishu. If we go to Mogadishu, they will go to the Gulf of Aden."

Somalia's prime minister, Nur Hassan Hussein, said patrols would not stop piracy and said instead that his country needed help in tackling the criminal networks that run within and without Somalia.