THE HAGUE, April 18 Dutch marines on Saturday freed 16 sailors after pirates in the Gulf of Aden briefly seized control of a tanker, officials said, as a Belgian vessel was taken hostage by sea bandits in the lawless waters.

NATO and Dutch officials said an attack on a Greek-owned ship from the Marshall Islands, the Handytankers Magic, had failed but the nine suspected pirates had to be freed.

“This morning we intercepted a request for assistance from ... the Handytankers Magic, that had fallen victim to a pirate attack,” Lieutenant Commander Alexandre Fernandes told AFP from aboard the Portuguese frigate Corte Real.

A Dutch defence ministry spokesman said the attack on the tanker was launched from a dhow, a traditional Arab sail boat, which was captured by pirates last Thursday. As the pirates sought to flee in small boats after the failed attack, a British naval vessel in the vicinity kept its guns trained on the group until the Dutch frigate arrived under NATO orders to board the dhow.

“The marines found 25 people on board, nine of them suspected pirates,” spokesman Robin Middel told AFP.

“The other people on the dhow were Yemeni fishermen who were hijacked by the suspected pirates.”

Belgian ship hijacked Belgium meanwhile confirmed a ship which had sent distress signals early Saturday had been captured.

Benoit Ramacker, a spokesman for the Belgian governments crisis management centre, told AFP the 65-metre Pompei was spotted after having transmitting two alarms in the early morning hours and contact was lost. “The ship has been spotted and we can confirm that it has been taken hostage,” he said.

Ramacker said senior Belgian government and shipping officials had convened an emergency meeting in Brussels following the latest hijacking.

The 1,850-tonne ship had a crew of two Belgians and a number of other nationalities, which earlier reports said included Dutch, Croatian and Filipino sailors.—AFP