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Pirates free 24 Asian sailors
05/11/2007 08:25 - (SA)
Seoul - A group of 24 Asian sailors held hostage by pirates in Somalia for more than five months was freed on Sunday and had left for Yemen, said the South Korean Foreign Ministry.
The two South Korean-owned fishing boats were hijacked on May 15. The Mavuno 1 and Mavuno 2 were manned by four South Koreans, 10 Chinese, four Indonesians, three Vietnamese and three Indians.
The sailors were free as of 13:00 and confirmed to be safe, the ministry said in a statement. "They are moving to Yemen."
A local seamen's union leader said, last week the release was imminent in return for the payment of hundreds of thousands of dollars in ransom.
Park Hee-Sung, head of the Federation of Korean Seafarers' Unions, said negotiations were underway in Dubai to win the release of ships and crew.
"When the ransom is paid, everything will be fine," Park quoted the ships' owner An Hyeon-Su as saying by phone from Dubai. "The captors are loading fuel and food on the ships."
Park said his federation had raised some $300 000 and Christian groups separately donated hundreds of thousand of dollars to help meet the pirates' demand for $1.1m in ransom.
Seoul could not help raise ransom
The Tanzania-registered ships were seized while en route to Yemen from Mombasa in Kenya.
In October, the captain of one of the ships, Han Seok-Ho, appealed for government help. Han said the pirates were beating the sailors and that crew members were suffering from malaria.
The Seoul government was accused by some relatives of the captives for doing too little to free them, especially after it worked actively to secure the release of a group of Christian aid workers seized in Afghanistan in July.
Foreign Minister Song Min-Soon said last week the government was "doing the best it can" to secure the release of the seamen but could not take part in raising a ransom.
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