NEW DELHI:
India’s navy said on Friday it had rescued 19 crew members aboard a seized fishing vessel off Somalia, the third such operation this week after a series of attacks on shipping in the region.
A distress call from the Iranian-flagged FV Omari was received on Wednesday and the Indian patrol vessel INS Sharda intercepted the vessel in the “morning hours” of Friday, according to a navy statement.
“The ship has secured the successful release of the crew… along with the vessel,” it said.
“The ship also undertook confirmatory boarding of the FV Omari to decontaminate and check the welfare of the crew held captive by the Somali pirates.”
Read more: Pakistani crew rescued from Somali pirates by Indian Navy
Eleven Iranian and eight Pakistani crew members were on board, the statement said.
Photos released by the navy showed Indian naval commandos boarding a boat, which was on its side with Iran’s national flag, in open waters.
A photo appeared to show one of the hijackers raising his hands in surrender.
Seven hijackers had taken control of the ship, the navy statement said, which did not elaborate on whether the hijackers had been captured.
It was the third time in the past week that Indian forces had intercepted Iranian-flagged fishing vessels in the region to rescue their crews from Somali hijackers.
Another patrol vessel “forced the safe release” of 19 crew members from the FV Al Naeemi on Monday night.
This operation came just 36 hours after India announced that its forces had freed 17 crew members on the MV Iman.
Also Read: India deploys unprecedented naval force near Red Sea to curb piracy
The hijackings off Somalia have fueled concerns about a resurgence of raids in the Indian Ocean by opportunistic pirates, accompanied by a distinct increase in attacks by Yemen’s Iran-backed Houthi rebels.
Houthi gunmen have launched dozens of attacks in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden targeting ships they believe are linked to Israel in response to Israel’s war against the Palestinian militant group Hamas in Gaza.
International naval forces have been diverted north from the Gulf of Aden to the Red Sea, sparking fears that pirates will exploit the security gap, with Somalia’s first successful piracy case since 2017 recorded in December.
Piracy attacks off the coast of Somalia peaked in 2011 — with gunmen launching attacks as far as 3,655 kilometers (2,270 miles) off the Somali coast in the Indian Ocean — before falling sharply after international navies dispatched warships and merchant vessels ships deployed armed garrisons.
In addition to rescuing the crew and freeing the vessels, India said its operations were preventing the “misuse of fishing vessels as mother ships for further acts of piracy” on larger merchant vessels.
India’s navy has been continuously deployed off Somalia since 2008, but sent a much larger force in December, including three guided missile destroyers and P-8I reconnaissance aircraft, to “maintain a deterrent presence” after a series of shipping attacks. AFP
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