Somali militia frees Indian ship

Somali gunmen acting as freelance coast guards freed a hijacked Indian dhow and its 13 crew members after a battle with pirates off the country’s northern coast, a Somali official said on Tuesday.

Four of the pirates were captured during the shootout while another four escaped, said Ali Abdi Aware, the foreign minister of Somalia’s semi autonomous region of Puntland. None of the dhow’s crew was wounded. Somalia does not have a formal coast guard, but groups of heavily armed clan-based militias sometimes do the job for local authorities.

The cargo-laden vessel was en route to Somalia from Asia when it was seized over the weekend, said Noel Choong, head of the International Maritime Bureau’s piracy reporting centre in Kuala Lumpur.

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