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Hijacked boats freed
30/01/2006 09:16 - (SA)
Taipei - Three more Taiwanese fishing boats hijacked off Somalia last year were released with their 62 crew at the weekend, an official said on Monday.
The vessels - the Cheng Ching Feng, Hsin Lien Feng 36, and Feng Rong 16 - were among four ships seized by Somali pirates. The Chung Yi 218 had been freed last Thursday.
"The three ships have set sail from Somalia, and the crew are all safe," said Taiwan foreign ministry spokesman Michel Lu.
The four vessels carried a total of 62 crew from Taiwan, China, the Philippines, Indonesia and Vietnam. The Feng Rong 16 had been hijacked in November and the other three in August last year.
Somali pirates reportedly had threatened to kill dozens of them unless the shipowners paid ransoms of $500 000 per boat. Lu declined to say whether the shipowners had paid any money.
Somalia was plunged into anarchy after strongman Mohamed Siad Barre was ousted in 1991, and the country disintegrated into a patchwork of fiefdoms run by warlords and clan militia chiefs.
On January 22, pirates hijacked another merchant ship, believed to be registered in the United Arab Emirates, off the Somali coast.
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