Indian Navy rescues 19 Pakistani fishermen kidnapped by pirates in Arabian Sea
Ajay Banerjee
New Delhi, January 30
Indian warship INS Sumitra rescued 19 Pakistani fishermen from Somali Pirates who hijacked their fishing vessel late night.
The operation was carried East of Somalia in Africa, the Navy said on Tuesday morning. Eleven Somalian pirates were on board the vessel.
It is the second rescue operation within a day for the Indian Navy after saving another Iranian-flagged fishing vessel, FV Iman, from Somali pirates, which had 17 crew members onboard in its anti-piracy operations along the east coast of Somalia and the Gulf of Aden on Monday, an official statement said.
The response by the Indian Navy to the fresh incident came three days after its warship INS Visakhapatnam extinguished a fire onboard a commercial oil tanker with 22 Indian crew when the vessel was struck by a missile in the Gulf of Aden.
The Navy on January 5 thwarted an attempted hijacking of Liberian-flagged vessel MV Lila Norfolk in the North Arabian Sea and rescued all its crew members.
Liberian-flagged vessel MV Chem Pluto, with 21 Indian crew members, was the target of a drone attack off India’s west coast on December 23.
