Indian naval forces have retaken a hijacked Iranian fishing boat off Somalia and freed its 20 crew members, India's Defense Ministry announced Tuesday, after an operation that ran for over two days.
Indian Defense Minister Rajnath Singh said the vessel, the Azini, was secured Monday in the Arabian Sea, upward of 3,000 kilometers from Mumbai.
The ministry said Indian forces followed the boat by sea and air before moving in, using a warship, a maritime surveillance plane and marine commandos. An Indian Air Force C-17 dropped in more commandos to join the effort.
Suspects sent ashore
An official with the Puntland Maritime Police Force, speaking anonymously because he lacked authorization to talk to reporters, said the Indian forces took weapons and mobile phones from 12 suspected Somali pirates and then let them go.
Those suspects, along with two Somali security guards, later landed at Bandar Bayla in northeastern Somalia, the official said. He said three people who came ashore had minor injuries but did not say who they were or how they were hurt.
India's ministry said nobody was killed or injured, without clarifying whether that applied to everyone on board or only the rescued crew. It was also not clear whether the crew stayed aboard the boat or were taken elsewhere.
The crew tally is also in question. A Puntland maritime police officer said Sunday that the Azini had 21 Iranian crew and two Somali guards aboard, a figure that could not immediately be reconciled with India's count.
Piracy returns to the region
Pirates seized the boat on Oct. 29 between Bandar Bayla and Hafun. India's ministry said there were fears it could serve as a floating base for raids on commercial shipping, while the Puntland official said regional authorities found out about the rescue only after it was over.
The hijacking comes amid renewed Somali piracy in the Gulf of Aden and the western Indian Ocean. Between April and August, pirates seized six commercial vessels, some well off Somalia's coast, among them the oil products tanker Sibu 1, captured roughly 136 nautical miles east of Yemen's al-Mukalla.
Puntland authorities said in September that pirates had killed five crew members of the tanker MT Honour 25, held since April, before security forces took it back. They said 16 suspected pirates were detained.
The attacks compound shipping risks in a region already upended by the Iran war, with strikes in the Strait of Hormuz and threats from Yemen's Iran-backed Houthi rebels against Saudi-linked vessels in the Bab el-Mandeb complicating oil routes. Longer voyages have raised tanker costs, and some oil cargoes rerouted around Africa face trips as much as a month longer.
International naval patrols and stronger maritime security cut Somali piracy sharply over the past decade, but the latest hijackings have revived worries about the threat.
