INFORM

Dutch marines on Sunday disarmed 12 suspected pirates off the coast of Somalia who had mistakenly attacked their warship thinking it was a merchant vessel, the Dutch defence ministry said.

The Dutch frigate Hr. Ms. Tromp, responding to a sighting from a German patrol plane, encountered the pirates' "mother boat" and two smaller motorised attack boats about 270 nautical miles off the Somali coast, said a statement.

"When the Tromp came within eight nautical miles of the pirates, two attack boats stormed the Tromp on the assumption that the frigate was a merchant vessel," said a ministry statement entitled: "Pirates miscalculate".

"When they realised they were trying to storm a war ship, they abandoned the attack and made haste trying to get away," throwing overboard a number of weapons and ladders normally used for boarding hijacked vessels.

Warning shots fired from the frigate forced the three pirate boats to come to a halt, and marines found a total of 12 people on board, the statement said.

"The marine frigate destroyed the two attack boats, and all the pirates were put on board the mother boat with sufficient food, water and fuel and sent back to Somalia."

The marines did not arrest the group because of a lack of physical evidence, ministry spokeswoman Marloes Visser told AFP.

"After they threw overboard the weapons and ladders, they could not be linked to a specific pirate attack."

The Tromp has found and disarmed 32 pirates in the past week. In total, it has disarmed 44 pirates while participating in a European Union anti-piracy mission in the lawless waters off the Horn of Africa nation.

Since mid-2009, Somali pirates have ventured from the now heavily-patrolled waters of the Gulf of Aden to launch the bulk of their attacks much further out in the Indian Ocean.