Pirates attack tanker off Indian coast

Pirates have overrun a tanker near India today, capturing the vessel and 31 crew members.

Pirates took control of the Panamanian-flagged MV Hannibal II while it was travelling from Malaysia to the Suez Canal, the European Union anti-piracy force said.

The EU Naval Force said the hijacking took place nearly 900 nautical miles east of the Horn of Africa, which is closer to India than Somalia.

The Hannibal has 31 crew on board, 23 of them from Tunisia. The EU said the tanker was carrying vegetable oil.

Meanwhile, in China a group of 17 sailors returned home safely after being held hostage more than four months. The sailors' Somali captors gave them only one meal of boiled potatoes per day, newspapers reported today.

The pirates were paid a ransom after the Shanghai-based ship's owner mortgaged his home and all his shipping company shares to raise funds, the Beijing Daily said.

The group arrived in Shanghai yesterday on a flight from the Qatari capital of Doha, the paper said.

All were in good health, despite having survived for 131 days on their potato diet and suffering from limited water supplies and poor hygiene conditions.

The sailors were working aboard the Singaporean-flagged Golden Blessing on its way to India from Saudi Arabia when an unknown number of pirates seized control on June 28.

The pirates had initially demanded a ransom of $15m (€11m), but that was later negotiated downward after the pirates began showing greater flexibility by the third month, the Beijing Daily said. The final amount paid was not given.

Somali pirates are regularly able to make multimillion dollar ransoms from their hijackings, which have increased in recent weeks because seasonal monsoons have ended.

A report quoted shipping company officials as saying there were at least six pirates and they appeared to be only loosely organised.

It said the two sides communicated by phone once or twice a day until a ransom was agreed and the hostages were permitted occasional calls to their families.