Within a week of the arrest of 14 Somali pirates in Una in Junagadh district of Gujarat's Saurashtra region, 18 more Somali pirates along with three other African nationals were located and arrested on the coast of Dwarka in Jamnagar district on Sunday.
According to the Jamnagar police, of those arrested two were Yemenis, believed to be fishermen, and one Tanzanian. Jamnagar District Police Superintendent Subhash Trivedi claimed that the Somali pirates had hijacked the Yemenis' fishing boat and were out in the sea to loot vessels before it developed technical snags and drifted towards the Saurashtra coast.
Mr. Trivedi said the Somali pirates had admitted to having dumped their weapons, including a rocket launcher, off the Oman coast, after they were spotted by a Nato helicopter on routine patrolling duty. The police said the seamen were in the sea for about 70 days before swimming ashore to Dwarka, where they were spotted by some locals, who alerted the police. On June 19, 14 Somali pirates and three Yemeni fishermen were detained at Una. Suspected Spmali pirates in police custody at Dwarka coast on Sunday night. Both the boats carrying Somali pirates had apparently breached the three tiers of security claimed to have been installed by the Navy, Coast Guard and marine police.
