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| Africa Horn | |
| Hostages off Somalia given supplies, reported to be in good health | |
| 2008-04-10 | |
| Fresh supplies been delivered to hostages and kidnappers on a luxury yacht held for the last six days by pirates off the coast of Somalia, a local rights group said Wednesday. "We have provided water and food, which the boat needed, and we will continue to give them what we can," Mohamud Abdulkadir 'John' of the Somali Tribal Rights Watch (STRW) organisation told AFP. At the pirates' request, the 32-cabin Ponant was given the essentials it needs for them to bed in during lengthy ransom negotiations. The ship remains moored in waters near a village, Garaad, on the north-eastern Somali coast, by the self-proclaimed autonomous region of Puntland. The hostages, including 22 French nationals and six Filipinos, with early information identifying the remainder as Ukrainian nationals, were said by the STRW official to be in good health and not endangered by their captors. "The pirates asked for food and water and we gave them what they wanted on humanitarian grounds," the representative said. "For now, we have nothing to do with this business beyond a humanitarian involvement. "The hostages are not ill and they have not been threatened by their kidnappers. We will continue to monitor their humanitarian needs," the man added. Another member of the non-governmental organisation told AFP that the abducted Ponant crew was "in good spirits". A French naval warship has been maintaining close surveillance of the boat with troops from the French gendarmerie's elite counter-terrorism and hostage rescue unit stationed in nearby Djibouti. President Nicolas Sarkozy has met with the families of the French hostages, with Sarkozy's foreign minister Bernard Kouchner saying "contact" has been established in a bid to negotiate a release. Experts have told AFP the Ponant is likely in the hands of a powerful armed gang known as the Somali Marines, structured along formal army lines and enjoying tribal warlord protection with separate business associates handling ransom talks.
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| Posted by:Fred |