India protests to Italy over fishermen's deaths The Indian foreign and defence ministries have lodged complaints with the Italian government after an Italian marine detachment opened fire from an Italian-flagged oil tanker and killed two fishermen off the south Indian coast, believing them to be pirates. The detachment from the Italian army's San Marco battalion was accompanying the Enrica Lexie, an oil tanker belonging to Italy's Fratelli D'Amato shipowners, through an area in the Indian Ocean considered to be at high risk for piracy on Wednesday evening when it saw the fishing boat about 30 miles off the Indian port of Kochi. The Italian ministry of defence subsequently insisted that the fishermen had been armed and had approached the tanker with a "clearly hostile" attitude "typical of pirates." The manner of approach had suggested they were intent on a boarding operation "characteristic of these seas." IN India A.K. Antony, India's defence minister, described the incident as "serious and unfortunate." Italy's ambassador to Italy was summoned to the Ministry of External Affairs for a formal protest to be lodged. The Enrica Lexie subsequently voluntarily went to Kochi, where the vessel's captain is reported to be under arrest. Fratelli d'Amato did not immediately respond to a request through its website for a comment. Reports said the vessel involved was travelling from Singapore to Egypt with a crew of Indian seamen. An increasing number of merchant vessels take on either military or private armed security guards when travelling through this area of the Indian Ocean. After an expansion of pirates" range over the past two years, vessels are at risk as far from Somalia as India's western coastline, where Wednesday's incident took place. A report last week from the Colorado-based One Earth Future Foundation said increasing numbers of vessels were diverting close to the Indian coastline to reduce the risk of pirate attack. Many experts ascribe a recent fall in the proportion of attacks that end in hijacking to the increased use of armed guards, as well as vessels" improved defences against attack. However, there have also been concerns that greater use of force could lead to the deaths of innocent bystanders such as fishermen, whose vessels can be indistinguishable from the mother ships from which pirates launch attacks. India's navy in November 2008 released video of one of its ships blowing up what it said was a pirate mother ship - only for it to emerge that 14 of the 15 Thai fishermen being held hostage on the vessel died, while the pirates holding them escaped. Peter Cook, founder of the Security Association for the Maritime Industry, which aims to regulate private security providers, said the incident was "extremely unfortunate" and offered sympathy to the bereaved. He said: "What I think this does highlight is that there needs to be good, clear orders and controls for the vessel protection detachments."