Pirates have released a Greek-operated cargo ship bound for Mumbai with a crew of 12 Ukrainians aboard.The ship was hijacked off Somalia over the weekend. The ship's operator said in Athens today that the captain of the ship informed that everybody is OK, alive and the pirates are not on board. He said, the vessel was proceeding to Mumbai. The pirates had attacked the vessel on Saturday some 900 nautical miles off the coast of Somalia, after it left the Gulf of Aden. Foreign naval powers have deployed dozens of warships since 2008 in a bid to secure the Gulf, a crucial maritime route leading to the Suez Canal through which tens of thousands of merchant vessels transit each year. But pirates have gradually extended their area of operations, seizing ships as far east as the Maldives' territorial waters and as far south as the Canal of Mozambique.