Pirate activity soars off Africa

MOGADISHU // Somali pirates have captured a US-owned tug boat and its 16-strong crew, a Kenyan official reported today, hours after another group holding a US captain hostage warned against any attempt to free him. The French defence minister, meanwhile, defended a marine raid on a French yacht in the region that left one hostage and two pirates dead.

Somali pirates captured the Italian-flagged tug and its crew this morning, said Andrew Mwangura of Kenya's East African Seafarers Assistance Programme. "The 16 crew members are all safe," he added. But he did not know the name of the boat. Ten of the 16 crew were Italians, Italy's foreign ministry said in a statement, without giving any details. Meanwhile, the pirate commander, Abdi Garad, speaking from the northern Somali pirate lair of Eyl, said Richard Phillips, the captured US captain, would be moved from the lifeboat where he was being held to another ship off the Somali coast.

On Friday, Mr Phillips jumped into the water and tried to swim towards the nearby US destroyer the USS Bainbridge, but was recaptured. Only four pirates are guarding him on the lifeboat, but transfer to a larger ship would make it easier for them to thwart any US military attempt to free him. US Navy forces have been pouring into the region amid the standoff over Mr Philipps, who has been held hostage since Wednesday, when the Danish-operated container ship he commanded was attacked.

A Nairobi-based diplomat, who receives regular briefings on the situation, said the four pirates holding Mr Phillips had tried to summon other pirates from the Somali mainland in a bid to reach the lifeboat. He said that at least two US ships and US Navy surveillance aircraft had been attempting to deter pirate ships and skiffs from contact with the lifeboat but he did not know if the pirates and Navy ships had come into contact.

The four pirates hijacked the Maersk Alabama, carrying 5,000 tonnes of UN aid destined for African refugees. Its unarmed American crew managed to take back control of the ship, but the pirates bundled Phillips on to the lifeboat as they escaped. Any attempt to free him would be disastrous, warned Mr Garad. "I'm afraid this matter is likely to create disaster because it's taking too long and we are getting information that the Americans are planning rescue tricks like the French commandos did," he said.

Somali elders and parents of pirates holding the American were trying to free the American today "without any guns or ransom," said Mr Mwangura in a statement from Kenya. But a spokesman for Somalia's hardline Islamist group al Shabab backed the recent rash of pirate attacks. "I believe that the pirates are not wrong to hijack the ships because there is no reason for the international ships to use Somalia's waters," Sheikh Muktar Robow told reporters in the south-central Somali city of Baidoa.

He blamed the international community for depleting the country's marine resources and dumping their waste there. Officers of the US Federal Bureau of Investigation meanwhile were waiting to debrief the crew of the Maersk Alabama on their arrival at the Kenyan port of Mombasa, said a statement from the ship's owners Maersk. Friday's raid by French marines came six days after the yacht, the Tanit, was seized in the Gulf of Aden. Although French forces freed three adults and a three-year-old boy, a fourth man, Florent Lemacon, the owner of the yacht and the child's father, was killed.

Herve Morin, the French defence minister, said today an autopsy and investigation would determine what had happened. But he could not rule out that the fatal shot had come from the French forces. "We did everything to save the hostages' lives," Mr Morin said on French radio. The four ex-hostages were due to arrive in Paris today, Mr Morin said. * Agence France-Presse, with additional reporting by the Associated Press