The battle with pirates operating off the coast of Somalia grew yesterday when raiders seized two more ships but lost one of their own in an uneven firefight with the Indian Navy. The International Maritime Bureau (IMB) described the situation yesterday as “out of control”.

The surge in hijackings came as Saudi Arabia confirmed that a ransom demand had been made for the freeing of the Sirius Star supertanker, seized at the weekend with her crew of 25 and a cargo of oil worth $100 million (£65 million).

Two more vessels – a Thai fishing boat with a crew of 16, and a bulk carrier, believed to be Greek, with an unknown number of people aboard – were seized by pirates in the Gulf of Aden yesterday, bringing the total to nine vessels in 12 days.

Late on Tuesday night the Indian frigate Tabar destroyed the raiders’ “mother ship” after coming under attack from pirates firing rocket-propelled grenades, the Indian Navy said. The confrontation was the first involving one of the vessels used by the pirates to extend their range. Shipping groups said that the loss of a vessel did not mean that the pirates’ activities would be curtailed. “The situation is already out of control,” said Noel Choong, head of the piracy reporting centre at the IMB in Kuala Lumpur. “With no strong deterrent, low risk to the pirates and high returns, the attacks will continue.”

David Miliband, the Foreign Secretary, said yesterday that the Royal Navy was coordinating the European response to the supertanker’s seizure from its warship in the region, HMS Cumberland. Saudi Arabia has also pledged to join the international task force operating under a UN mandate, along with new pledges of ships from Sweden and South Korea.

Two British crewmen held hostage aboard theSirius Starwere named yesterday as chief engineer Peter French and second officer James Grady. Of the remaining crew, 19 are Filipino, 2 Polish, 1 Croatian and 1 Saudi.

The international furore over the hijack of the supertanker, the largest ship yet taken by pirates, may lead its captors to seek a swift resolution for fear of other intervention. However, the value of both vessel and cargo may also lead to drawn-out bargaining, as it has in the case of the Ukrainian arms ship seized in September. The Qatar-based Arabic TV channel al-Jazeera aired video yesterday of a purported middleman saying that negotiations had begun on board the tanker and on shore.

The Saudi Foreign Minister, Prince Saud al-Faisal, said the ship’s owners, Vela International, had opened negotiations over a sum, although the company itself remained tight-lipped, citing the safety of the crew. The ship is moored off the Somali coast, close to the well-defended pirate haven of Eyl.

“I know that the owners of the tanker are negotiating on the issue,” the prince said. “We do not like to negotiate with either terrorists or hijackers, but the owners of the tankers are the final arbiters of what happens there.”

“We are going to join the task force that will try to eradicate this threat to international trade.”

The violence of the Indian confrontation on Tuesday night has raised alarm over the pirates’ growing audacity. An Indian Navy statement said the confrontation began when the Tabar approached the boat and spotted groups of men armed with rocket-propelled grenades and Kalashnikovs.

“The INS Tabar closed in on the mother vessel and asked her to stop for investigation,” the statement said. “But on repeated calls, the vessel’s threatening response was that she would blow up the naval warship if it approached.”

An exchange of fire ensued and the navy ship opened up with heavy guns. “From what we see in photographs the pirate vessel is completely destroyed,” a senior naval officer said.

British Royal Navy Commodore Keith Winstanley, deputy commander of the Combined Maritime Forces in the Middle East, said he feared no amount of coalition forces would be sufficient to secure the 2.5 million sq nautical miles of the Gulf of Aden, let alone the Indian Ocean waters where the supertanker was seized. “The pirates will go somewhere we are not,” he said. “If we patrol the Gulf of Aden then they will go to Mogadishu. If we go to Mogadishu, they will go to the Gulf of Aden.”

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