In another successful anti-piracy operation, Navy warship on Saturday repulsed an attack on a merchant vessel in the Gulf of Aden and nabbed 23 Somali and Yemeni sea brigands, in a show of resolve to weed out the menace that affected maritime trade in the region.The pirates on two speed boats had surrounded the merchant vessel flying the Ethiopian flag around noon, when INS Mysore warship intervened and warded off the attack, Navy spokesperson said.The pirates had fired at the merchant vessel with their small arms, when it sent out a rescue call and the Indian warship, which was sailing nearby moved its Marine Commandos on a helicopter to help the distressed cargo vessel, he said.The attack took place about 150 nautical miles off Aden and INS Mysore was about 13 nautical miles away from the merchant vessel when it picked up the SOS call.The Navy flew its Marine Commandos on helicopters to the scene of the pirate attack and rescued the ship. MV Gibe was later escorted to safety, he added.The Naval commandos also boarded the pirates' boats and seized seven AK-47 assault rifles, two other rifles, a grenade launcher and 13 fully loaded magazines of ammunition from the 12 Somali and 11 Yemeni pirates on board the two pirate boats.Further search for other pirates, who fled from the spot following the Indian Naval intervention, was in progress, the spokesperson said.Last month, Navy warship INS Tabar, a missile-frigate, had sunk a mother ship of the pirates and had also rescued two merchant vessels that were under attack from the sea brigands.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, 2008.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.
