The commando-style attacks that killed some 200 people in Mumbai, India, last week began with a small-scale amphibious invasion that bears uncanny resemblance to recent pirate attacks off the African coast.
"On Saturday, the Indian navy
said it was investigating whether a trawler found drifting off the coast of Mumbai, with a bound corpse on board, was used in the attack," the Associated Press reports. The corpse is believed to be that of the boat's captain, killed after his vessel was hijacked.
The seaborne attackers possibly reached Mumbai's shore using "a black and yellow rubber dinghy found near the site of the attacks."
This "mothership" model of sea operations is the same used by Somali pirates who have seized scores of ships this year, ransoming them for millions of dollars apiece. Pirates use captured trawlers as "carriers" to take armed skiffs out to sea, where they can threaten tankers and cargo ships sailing beyond sight of shore. The Indian navy recently destroyed one pirate mothership that, tragically, still had its kidnapped Thai crew aboard.
While there is NO ideological or strategic connection between pirates and Islamic terrorists, their tactics often overlap in this brave new world of "global guerrillas."
[Photo: AP via Daily Mail]
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