Ahmedabad:
It seems that attacks by Somali pirates just do not seem to end. In a recent incident, Gujarat police captured a foreign fishing boat with 17 men on board at Nandel, a small port near the Junagadh district. Fourteen of them were Somali pirates and the other three were Yemenese nationals, their hostages.
On Monday, they sailed in their partially-wrecked ship and landed in a village in Junagadh, completely undetected by Gujarat's three-tier coastal security. They possibly would have escaped too had the villagers not raised an alarm.
''The pirates then forcibly took the three others which included a cook, a mechanic and a sailor in their boat and were probably waiting for a bigger ship or trawler to attack. The ship developed a snag and they encountered a naval ship in the high seas and in panic threw their ammunition in the sea,'' said Ashish Bhatia, IGP, Anti-Terror Squad, Gujarat.
Apart from the Navy and Coast Guard, the waters they entered are also patrolled by the Marine Police. The Coast Guard, in fact, has three Dorniers and three advance light helicopters with capability to detect in the dark.
However, these resources did not rally serve the purpose considering the pirates almost casually breached this sensitive zone, cutting close to the route the 26/11 terrorists had taken between Karachi and Mumbai.