Belgian ship escapes hijacking off Somalia coast

Mogadishu: Gunmen from Somalia seized a Belgian-registered ship and its 10 crew, including seven Europeans, further south in the Indian Ocean on Saturday.

"The Pompei is heading slowly towards the Somali coast," Peter Mertens, a spokesman for a Belgian government crisis centre, said. "We have had visual contact from a helicopter of a Spanish navy ship."

Nato Lieutenant Commander Alexandre Fernandes, speaking on board the Portuguese warship Corte-Real, said the 20 fishermen were rescued after a Dutch navy frigate on a Nato patrol responded to an assault on a Greek-owned tanker by pirates firing assault rifles and grenades.

Commandos from the Dutch ship, the De Zeven Provincien, pursued the pirates, who were on a small skiff, back to their "mother ship", a hijacked Yemeni fishing dhow.

"We have freed the hostages, we have freed the dhow and we have seized the weapons... The pirates did not fight and no gunfire was exchanged," Fernandes told Reuters. The Corte-Real is also on a Nato anti-piracy mission.

He said the hostages had been held since last week. The commandos briefly detained and questioned the seven gunmen, but had no legal power to arrest them.

"Nato does not have a detainment policy. The warship must follow its national law," he said.

"They can only arrest them if the pirates are from the Netherlands, the victims are from the Netherlands, or if they are in Netherlands waters."

He said an unexploded rocket-propelled grenade was later found on board the tanker, the Marshall Islands-flagged MT Handytankers Magic, managed by Roxana Shipping SA of Greece.

Mertens said fears grew for the Pompei, a dredging vessel, after it sounded two alarms early on Saturday when it was about 600 km (370 miles) from the Somali coast en route to the Seychelles.

The ship was carrying two Belgian, four Croatian, one Dutch and three Filipino crew members.