Merchant vessel attacked after departing from Salalah 

(MENAFN - Muscat Daily) A merchant vessel, the MSC Jasmine, was attacked by Somali pirates after it departed from Salalah for the Kenyan port of Mombasa last week. The attackers were subsequently arrested by coalition naval forces operating in the Arabian Sea.The Panama flagged merchant vessel was en route from Salalah to Mombasa, around 400 nautical miles east northeast of Mogadishu, Somalia, when she was approached by a pirate skiff with six people on board and came under attack.According to the International Maritime Bureau's Piracy Reporting Centre, the vessel was fired upon before the vessel's private security team forced the pirates away.The next day, a combined effort by NATO and EU Navfor assets tracked down 12 suspected pirates on board a mothership. The pirates were detained by the French frigate FS Surcouf with the cooperation from the USS Halyburton, a German maritime patrol aircraft and a UK Royal Navy helicopter.''With such a large area of operation, cooperation of the counter piracy community is essential. We demonstrated yet again that we work best when we work together,'' said Rear Admiral Antonio Natale, commander of the NATO counter piracy task force, after the incident.Lieutenant Mike Curd, commander of the Royal Navy helicopter, also praised the cooperation between the different sets of forces in tracking the pirates. ''Our Lynx (helicopter) actually performed the stop and supported the boarding of both the suspect vessels, and provided airborne support to the subsequent boarding operations. Procedures and routines which we had practised so many times worked extremely efficiently and by nightfall we knew we had played a large part in the successful apprehension of a dozen suspected pirates,'' he said.