NAVY guards on board an Italian oil tanker have shot dead two Indian fishermen after mistaking them for pirates, an Indian official said yesterday.
India’s coast guard brought back the bodies of two men who are thought to have been killed on Wednesday (February 15) by Italian navy officers on board the vessel Enrica Lexie 64 kilometres (40 miles) off Kerala.
The Italian ambassador to India was summoned to the foreign ministry where India registered an official protest over the deaths.
The captain of Enrica Lexie, who has been ordered to anchor near the local port Cochin, told officials the motorised fishing boat was believed to be a pirate ship after it sailed close to the tanker, Indian navy spokesman Roy Francis said.
“The security wing fired at the fishermen and the captain has alerted the coast guard about the firing. We are making a detailed investigation,” Francis told reporters.
In Rome, the navy issued a statement saying that the fishing boat had behaved aggressively and had been warned on several occasions by the security team on board.
“The crew indicated to us that the attitude of the fishing boat was judged to be clearly hostile, typical of pirates,” the statement said, adding that the facts of the incident had not been established.
“It did not respond to warning signals. The crew on board the tanker used standard procedures,” it said. “The fishing boat distanced itself after the third warning shot, without any visible damage on board.”
Shipping companies are increasingly employing security guards to protect their vessels because of dangers in the seas off the coast of Somalia where ships of all sizes have been seized by pirates.
India is among several countries including China, the US and France which have deployed their navies in the Gulf of Eden off the coast of Somalia since anti-piracy operations were launched in 2008.
Freddie Louis, who owns the fishing vessel, said security men on board the tanker fired at the boat “without provocation,” killing the two unarmed men aged 50 and 21.
The boat with 11 men had sailed out to trawl for tuna fish on February 7.
“We were returning after the fishing and all of us were sleeping except Valentine and Pinki,” Louis told reporters, identifying the victims by their first names.
“The firing lasted for two minutes (and then) we steered the boat out of firing range,” he added.
Fishermen union leader T Peter described the attack as the first by a foreign vessel off the coast of Kerala.
“We are all shocked,” Peter added.
Pirates operating from Somalia – which has been without a central government for two decades – carried out 237 attacks in 2011, more than half the world total, the London-based IMB Piracy Reporting Centre said last month.
The waters off India’s southwestern coast are a key shipping lane linking Asia with Europe.
Cochin police commissioner Ajith Kumar said police and coast guard personnel had boarded the 58,000-tonne tanker and were awaiting official clearance to question the crew.
The Kerala state government promised 200000 rupees ($4,000/ £2529.24) to families of the each fishermen killed, officials said.
