Hostages Overcome Pirates on 2 Fishing Boats Off Somali Coast

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

MOGADISHU, Somalia (AP) — Using machetes and guns, the men fought a desperate battle to take control of two boats off the Somali coast. But this time, it was not pirates who attacked — it was Egyptian fishermen who had been held hostage for four months and who killed two of their captors and took others prisoner as they regained control of their two ships.

On Friday, the roughly three dozen newly liberated fishermen sailed toward home.

One pirate was in custody in Somalia after local fishermen found him near shore with machete wounds, the police there said. Another pirate, who said he escaped during the fight on Thursday, described the struggle in a telephone interview with The Associated Press.

“They attacked us with machetes and other tools, seized some of our guns and then fought us,” said the pirate, who identified himself only by his nom de guerre, Miraa. “I could see two dead bodies of my colleagues lying on the ship. I do not know the fate of the nine others.”

The fishermen on both vessels coordinated their attack, and some of the pirates even cooperated with them, making it easier for the other gunmen to be overpowered, said Mohamed Alnahdi, the executive manager of Mashreq Marine Product, which had hired the fishing boats.

“The crew on both boats started their operations at one time. They were coordinating among themselves,” he said in a telephone interview from Bossaso, a Somali town where he spent more than a month trying to negotiate the fishermen’s release.

Mr. Alnahdi, whose company is based in Yemen, said the ransom talks had deadlocked on Thursday, with him offering $200,000 but the pirates demanding $1.5 million.

After the escape, the fishing boats, the Ahmed Samara and the Momtaz, sailed for Yemen, where the crews were to hand over the captured pirates. The men will then fly home to Egypt, said Mohammad Nasr, owner of the Ahmed Samara.

The struggle took place off the coastal town of Las Qorey along the Gulf of Aden, one of the world’s busiest waterways. It is infested with Somali pirates.

Pirate attacks worldwide more than doubled in the first half of 2009 as they surged in the Gulf of Aden and the east coast of Somalia, which together accounted for 130 of the cases, according to an international maritime watchdog.

Naval patrols by ships from the United States, European nations, China, Russia and India have failed to halt the attacks.

The ending to the fishermen’s four-month ordeal was unusual, but it was not the first time a crew fought back.

In April, an American crew fought off Somali pirates until the captain, Richard Phillips, offered himself as a hostage in a bid to save their lives.

He was held hostage in a lifeboat for five days and was freed after United States Navy snipers killed three of his captors.

Somalia has not had an effective government since the 1991 overthrow of a dictatorship plunged the country into chaos. Pirates have operated freely around Somalia’s 1,900-mile coastline.

Legislation before Congress would require the Defense Department to put armed teams on ships flying the United States flag that are passing through high-risk waters, specifically around the Horn of Africa.

Soldiers in Philippines Attack Militant Group, Abu Sayyaf

MANILA (AP) — Hundreds of soldiers began an assault on Wednesday in the southern Philippines on two jungle encampments of militants linked to Al Qaeda, killing at least 20 gunmen and seizing bombs that had been set to explode, military officials said.

The simultaneous predawn attacks on the militant group, Abu Sayyaf, on Basilan Island, set off fierce fighting that continued late in the day. Maj. Gen. Benjamin Dolorfino, the regional military commander, said 23 soldiers had been killed.

Abu Sayyaf, which has about 400 gunmen on Basilan and nearby Jolo Island and the Zamboanga Peninsula, is on a United States list of terrorist organizations because of its involvement in bombings, ransom kidnappings and beheadings of hostages. The group is suspected of having received money and training from Al Qaeda.

Abu Sayyaf has been weakened by American-backed offensives for the past several years, and has turned to kidnappings for ransom in recent months.

Filipino security officials fear that the ransom payments could revive the group on Basilan and Jolo, two predominantly Muslim regions that are among the country’s poorest areas.

Seizures Show Somalia Rebels Need Money

By JEFFREY GETTLEMAN

NAIROBI, Kenya — The Shabab, Somalia’s most fearsome Islamist group, the one leading a guerrilla war against the weak transitional government, may be running into a problem with its cash flow.

In the past week, Shabab rebels have seized two French security advisers originally captured by a different band of Somalian gunmen, and now they are widely suspected of another kidnapping on Saturday morning along the Kenya-Somalia border.

“They need money,” said one Western diplomat, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, citing diplomatic protocol. “It’s a fact.”

Another fact: kidnapping is one of the few money-making industries left in shattered Somalia.

According to a new posting on a Somalian insurgent Web site, the Shabab will soon try the Frenchmen in an Islamic court. And though the Shabab’s brand of justice often involves amputations and even beheadings, the Web site said that in this case, commanders were considering a “fine,” a signal that they may be after money more than blood.

Recent events bear that out, analysts say. While Somalia’s transitional government got a 40-ton pile of guns and ammunition from the United States in June, the Shabab’s outside support may be slowing down.

Kidnapping has been a lucrative business in Somalia for years, but now more than ever. The country’s central government imploded in 1991, and ever since then marauding gangs, warlords, teenage street fighters and various Islamist factions have scrambled for power and money. Pirates off Somalia’s coast netted tens of millions of dollars last year alone, seizing ships and ransoming back the crews. These days, the few foreigners who enter Somalia need platoons of gunmen to make sure they are not the next victims.

At a meeting last week with reporters in Paris, Claude Guéant, chief of staff for the French president, was asked if the kidnapping of the two French security advisers, who were snatched from their Mogadishu hotel on Tuesday, was a “money issue.”

Mr. Guéant answered that “it was likely” to be one.