 NAIROBI - Somali authorities have arrested four men they said were members of a gang of pirates who hijacked a ship chartered to carry UN food aid and are still holding the crew, a UN agency said on Tuesday.
"Stick 'em up!"
"Yarrrr!"
Gunmen used speedboats to intercept the Kenyan-owned MV Rozen on Sunday, storming the freighter and taking hostage its six Kenyan and six Sri Lankan crew, in the first hijacking reported since a December war ousted Islamists from Somalia. The ship, chartered by the U.N.Â’s World Food Programme (WFP), has been anchored off Bargal, a port in SomaliaÂ’s semi-autonomous Puntland region, since the hijacking.
"Put 'er in at Bargal, me hearties! They'll never think of lookin' fer us there!"
The WFP said four men were arrested when they went ashore to buy supplies, leaving four other gang members aboard the ship.
| Not the brightest bulbs, are they? |
‘The arrest is welcome news, but the safe release of the crew and the vessel remains our chief concern,’ WFP Somalia’s country director Peter Goossens said in a statement. ‘We very much hope this ordeal will finish soon. We are appealing for the safe return of the crew and the vessel as soon as possible, and for people to respect the need for humanitarian delivery corridors.’
| Ever try making it clear to them that humanitarian food deliveries are optional? |
The WFP said there were reports the vessel was surrounded by five police boats and was sailing southwards. A maritime group said authorities were negotiating with the hijackers, who had apparently attacked the wrong ship. ‘Negotiations are going well,’ Andrew Mwangura, director of the Mombasa Seafarers Assistance Programme, told Reuters. ‘They might be released any time ... The gunmen might be released by the authorities and given free passage home as they are the same clan as the Puntland authorities.’
| Ah-h-h-h-h. Light dawns. Now we know why everyone's being so respectful of the pirates' tender feelings. |
The ship, chartered from Mombasa-based Motaku Shipping Agency, was seized after unloading 1,800 tonnes of food aid at two northern Somali ports. It was the third hijacking in two years of a ship hired to carry relief supplies by the WFP. |