Pirates seize Italian cargo ship in Arabian Sea

"They are all well, we spoke half an hour ago with the commander," said Carlo Miccio, an official at Perseveranza, the Naples-based operators of the vessel, the "Rosalio D'Amato."

He said he did not know how many pirates were on board the vessel, with 70,000 tonnes freight capacity, which was heading from Brazil with a cargo of soya for Iran when it was seized off the Horn of Africa.

Without citing its sources, Italian news agency ANSA said the vessel was now heading to the coast of Somalia, the base for pirates who have attacked ships in the Arabian Sea and Indian Ocean in recent years.

In February, pirates seized an Italian oil tanker in the Indian Ocean, some 800 miles off the coast of Somalia.

(Reporting by Sara Rossi, edited by Richard Meares)