Gulf of Aden
Somali pirates kidnap four European tourists in Gulf of Aden
Four European tourists were abducted by pirates from a yacht off Somali's northern semi-autonomous region of Puntland on June 22, officials said.
The yacht was heading for the coast after running low on fuel in the Gulf of Aden, when the pirates boarded the vessel and took the four captive, Yusuf Jama Dabeed, district commissioner of the self-declared Somaliland Republic's seaside town of Las Korey, said by phone today.
``The foreigners were a German man and his French wife and their young son, as well as the skipper of the yacht,'' Dabeed said. ``The pirates entered our district with their captives then fled with them to the mountains.''
Soldiers from Somaliland have seized the yacht and others have been deployed to find the tourists and the pirates, Dabeed said.
``We will try to free the tourists and capture the pirates,'' Ahmed Yusuf Yasin, vice president of Somaliland, told reporters in the capital, Hargeisa, yesterday.
Piracy has increased off the eastern African nation, with 31 incidents reported last year, up from 10 the year before, according to the International Maritime Bureau. The bureau has advised all vessels to stay at least 200 nautical miles from the Somali coast.
The Horn of African country's 3,300-kilometer (2,060-mile) coastline is considered one of the world's most dangerous stretches of water because of pirate attacks. Somali pirates are still holding three vessels after a United Nations resolution to send warships to the region to protect shipping.
bloomberg.com
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