All 23 crew members that included 10 Indians of the Montecristo cargo ship were brought to safety, the Italian Foreign Ministry said. The 11 pirates were taken into custody.

In a dramatic operation, British and U.S. Special Forces on Tuesday stormed an Italian cargo ship hijacked by Somali pirates, after retrieving a message in a bottle tossed by hostages from a porthole alerting ships.

As per reports the ship departed Liverpool in the UK on September 10 with a cargo of scrap iron bound for Vietnam. And it came under attack as soon as it left its escort, a Japanese naval vessel, and entered the Indian Ocean. The clever crew locked themselves up in an armoured room and sent the message. Though the ships sailing around the place knew that the cargo liner was under the pirates control, the message helped in understanding the ideal situation for launching operations.

The pirates struck even as an Indian naval warship patrolled the Gulf of Aden as part of anti-piracy efforts initiated in October 2008. The Gulf of Aden, which links the Indian Ocean with the Suez Canal and Mediterranean Sea, is the quickest route for more than 20,000 vessels that journey annually between Asia, Europe and the Americas.