Basque tuna purse seiner ‘Felipe Ruano’ on Thursday escaped from a pirate attack in the Indian ocean about a thousand kilometers off the Somalian shore, Basque radio station Euskadi Irratia reported.
As the Bermeo-based tuna boat told Euskadi Irratia, the pirate boat tried to reach the Basque fishing boat, which tried to accelerate and escape. Once the captain saw they could not avoid the chasers, the private security guards aboard the ship drove them off with gunfire.
It was the first attack to a Basque fishing boat in the Indian Ocean during this monsoon season, four months after the last one.
Somalia has been torn apart by civil war for the past 19 years. The shaky U.N.-backed government is barely able to hold a few blocks of its capital and is too focused on fighting an Islamist insurgency to send its forces after pirates.
