Somali security forces free ship, captain killed

[June 03, 2010]  NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) -- Security forces from Somalia's semiautonomous Puntland region stormed a hijacked cargo vessel early Thursday and outgunned the pirates holding it after they fatally shot the ship's Pakistani captain, authorities said.

Authorities decided to try and free the Panama-flagged ship by force after pirates refused pleas to surrender and instead killed the captain, said Said Mohamed Raage, who is the minister of marine transport and ports in the region.

"We can't afford letting pirates capture Somali-charted ships. If we don't act so decisively they will continue hijacking all Somali-bound cargo ships," Raage told The Associated Press.

Two officers were wounded during a brief shootout with the pirates and ultimately all seven pirates were detained, he said.

While rescue operations by Somali ragtag security forces are rare, it's not the first time they have tried to free a ship. In 2008, they stormed a hijacked ship carrying food to the war-ravaged, poor country, rescuing the hostages and arresting seven pirates.

The QSM Dubai had been hijacked early Wednesday in the Gulf of Aden while headed for a port in the breakaway northern region of Somaliland. The crew aboard the ship hailed from Egypt, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Ghana. It had sailed from Brazil and carried goods for both Somaliland and Puntland regions.

Puntland, which declared itself an autonomous state within Somalia in 1998, has generally been spared the violence that has wracked much of Somalia's southern and central regions. But pirates use the region as a base of operations.

Thursday's incident comes barely a day after the crew of a Libyan-owned cargo ship pounced on their sleeping Somali captors, disarming the pirates and killing five of them. The crew was able to regain control of their vessel, which had been hijacked Feb. 3 in the Gulf of Aden.

One crew member was seriously wounded during that struggle, the European Union's anti-piracy task force said. A sixth pirate managed to lock himself in a room and call other pirates to say they had been overpowered before the crew took him hostage.

Somalia has been mired in violence since 1991, and its weak U.N.-backed government is too busy fighting an Islamist insurgency to patrol its shores or go after pirates on land.

The multimillion dollar ransoms that pirates command are one of the few remaining ways for Somalis to make money. Experts say the problems will only get worse unless the security situation on land improves. Somali pirates are currently holding at least 20 vessels and several hundred crew members.

[Associated Press; By MALKHADIR M. MUHUMED]

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