By Katrina Manson

FREETOWN, Sept 24 (Reuters) - Sierra Leone's navy has arrested eight Guinean nationals, including military, police and fisheries inspectors who it said carried out a pirate attack on two locally licensed fishing vessels, officials said on Monday.

British-trained Sierra Leone naval officers interrupted the high-seas hold-up by armed men in two launches on Sunday, 18 nautical miles off the capital Freetown inside the West African country's 200-mile (320-km) economic exclusion zone.

One of the attacking speedboats escaped north towards Guinea, while the other was seized. The eight men arrested were found with AK-47 automatic rifles and bags of fish, including high-value snapper, taken off the Sierra Leone-licensed vessels.

"They are all Guinean pirates," said Daniel Mansaray, commander of the Sierra Leone Armed Forces Maritime Wing.

"They identified themselves. There were two from the Guinean armed forces -- one navy and one army -- two police, two fisheries officers and two civilians -- one mechanic and one outboard operator," he added.

Sean Brady, a British Royal Navy commander who advises the Sierra Leone Maritime Wing as part of a UK training mission for the country's armed forces, confirmed the arrests of the Guinean military personnel and fisheries inspectors.

"There was one boat with the pirates and one boat to take away all the bounty to Conakry. ... It's embarrassing for Guinea," he told Reuters.

There was no immediate comment from Guinean authorities.

International law enforcement officials say Guinea's port capital of Conakry on the former French colony's Atlantic coast is a major staging post and jump-off point for criminal gangs trafficking illegal migrants and drugs bound for Europe.

Piracy and illegal fishing are also rife off the West African coastline, a jigsaw of deltas, swamps, mangrove creeks and islands which are poorly patrolled by regional states.

"Sierra Leone waters are pirated all the time and usually they (the pirates) commandeer the catch (of fishing vessels) and take it to Guinea. The fisherman are scared," Mansaray said.

"They (the pirates) are getting too bold -- coming right down the coast to pirate and loot these vessels and stealing millions. If it continues, it will discourage people from licensing their vessels here in Sierra Leone," he added.

The high-seas incident followed a brief visit to Conakry on Friday by newly elected Sierra Leone President Ernest Bai Koroma, who was making his first foreign trip as head of state.

Aides said Koroma had asked Guinean President Lansana Conte and the leaders of Liberia and Burkina Faso for more cooperation to preserve security in a volatile, crime-ridden region that was racked by civil wars for more than a decade.

Sierra Leone has only four maritime patrol vessels and two are out of service due to missing parts. The country's single ocean-going patrol vessel was donated by China.

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