MOGADISHU (Reuters) - More than 30 Somali pirates are missing at sea and colleagues said on Thursday they feared they had drowned or been attacked by the crews of foreign warships.

Patrols by foreign navies off the lawless Horn of Africa state have failed to stop hijackings by the heavily armed sea gangs in the strategic shipping lanes that link Europe to Asia.

The French military said on Wednesday that one of its naval vessels had repelled a night assault by Somali pirates who apparently believed it was a cargo ship, capturing five of the attackers after a chase on the high seas.

A pirate who gave his name as Hassan told Reuters on Thursday that many more of their colleagues had disappeared.

"We are missing more than 30 of our friends who went out to sea over the last two weeks to carry out hijackings," he said by telephone from one of the gangs' strongholds, Haradheere.

"We have lost communication with them and we're afraid that they have been captured or killed by warships, or else drowned."

Monsoon rains lashing the Indian Ocean and Gulf of Aden had curbed attacks, but now the raids have started to pick up again. Last Friday, gunmen seized a Spanish tuna fishing boat with 36 crew members on board.

The gangs from Somalia -- some of them made up of former fishermen angered by foreign fleets trawling Somali waters for years -- have made tens of millions of dollars in ransoms.

On Monday, they freed a Turkish ship and its 23 sailors after a pirate source said they^received a $1.5 million ransom.

Source: Reuters, Oct 08, 2009

Somalia-Kenya-recruitments-denial

Saturday, October 10, 2009

Somalia’s Transitional Federal Government(TFG) on Saturday denied reports saying that it has recruited young men from ethnic Somali Kenyans as soldiers in areas along the border between Kenya and Somalia.

Information Minister, Sheik Dahir Mahmoud Guelleh told reporters in Mogadishu that speculations that his government recruited young soldiers in the Bulla Iftin Village near the Kenyan city of Garrisa are baseless and he doesn’t know from where the news was quoted from.

"We are not aware of any soldiers recruited for Somali government in north eastern Kenyan region, it had been better that media broadcasts some thing true," the Somali minister said in Mogadishu Saturday.

"Somali government is respecting the international law and only recruits its citizens if it needs troops, we know that people in north eastern Kenya are originally from Somalia but they have Kenyan citizenship and they are Kenyans" the minister stated.

The minister’s denial comes as some media outlets quoted yesterday residents and eye witnesses in Garrissa as saying that nearly 200 young ethnic Somalis and former soldiers were recruited by Somali government to help it defeat Islamists based in the Somali side of the border with Kenya .

Somalia’s fragile government is facing nearly daily attacks from allied Islamist groups including the Al-Qaeda-linked Al shabab extremists who have stepped up attacks against AU peacekeepers and Somali government after Ethiopian troops’ withdrawal from the country in Mid January this year.

Fighting in the restive capital alone has engulfed the lives of more than 9,000 civilians since May this year, with the United Nations saying that more than 3.5 million people about half of the country’s total population need an emergency life- saving food aid.

Source: APA, Oct 10, 2009