At least SOMEBODY is engaging the bad guys over there...
Indian Navy Sinks Suspected Pirate "Mother" Ship
NEW DELHI – The ship, operating off the coast of Oman in the lawless waters of the Gulf of Aden, was crewed by heavily armed men, some carrying rocket-propelled grenade launchers. Behind it were a pair of speedboats — the sort pirates often use when they launch attacks on merchant ships in these violent seas.
What followed, officials said Wednesday, was a rare victory in a sea war against Somalia-based piracy that has become increasingly more violent, and where the pirates are ever more bold.
A patrolling Indian navy frigate quickly identified the vessel as a "mother ship" — a mobile attack base used to take gangs of pirates and smaller speedboats into deep water — and ordered it to stop and be searched.
"They responded on the offensive and said that they would blow up the Indian naval ship," Commander Nirad Sinha, a navy press officer, told reporters in New Delhi. Then the pirates opened fire.
Navy officials wouldn't say how long the battle Tuesday lasted, but the frigate, the INS Tabar, is a 400-foot war machine, carrying cruise missiles, surface-to-air missiles and six-barreled 30 mm machine guns for close combat, according to the Web site GlobalSecurity.org.
By the time the battle was over, the mother ship had sunk — the Indian gunfire sparked fires and a series of onboard blasts, possibly due to exploding ammunition — and the speedboats were racing into the darkness.
One was later found abandoned. The other escaped. An unknown number of people died on the mother ship, a navy statement said.
Read the whole story here:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20081119/ap_on_re_af/piracy
And in Sports: Indians 1, Pirates O
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