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Attempt no rescue, pay a ransom, pirates say
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Published: September 29, 2008
MOGADISHU, Somalia -- As a heavily armed U.S. destroyer patrolled nearby and planes flew overhead yesterday, a spokesman for the Somali pirates said that his group was demanding a $20 million ransom to release a cargo ship loaded with Russian tanks.
The spokesman also warned that the pirates would fight to the death if any country tried military action to regain the ship, and a man who said he was the ship's captain reported that one crew member had died.
Pirates seized the Ukrainian-operated ship Faina off the coast of Somalia on Thursday as it headed to Kenya carrying 33 Russian-built T-72 tanks and a substantial amount of ammunition and spare parts. The ordnance was ordered by the Kenyan government.
Senior policewoman slain by Taliban in Afghanistan
KABUL, Afghanistan -- Two Taliban assassins on a motorbike shot and killed a senior policewoman as she left for work in Afghanistan's largest southern city yesterday and gravely wounded her son.
Malalai Kakar, 41, who led Kandahar city's department of crimes against women, was leaving home when she was killed, said Zalmai Ayubi, a spokesman for the Kandahar provincial governor. Her 18-year-old son was wounded, he said.
The Taliban claimed responsibility.
Militants frequently attack projects, schools and businesses run by women. The Taliban regime, which was ousted in the 2001 U.S.-led invasion, did not allow women outside the home without a male escort.
4 killed, 20 hurt in blast outside hotel in Ethiopia
ADDIS ABABA, Ethiopia -- An explosion outside a hotel in Ethiopia's volatile eastern region killed four people yesterday and injured 20 others, a federal police spokesman said.
The explosion occurred in the eastern Ethiopia town of Jijiga, some 430 miles (700 kilometers) east of the capital, Addis Ababa, said spokesman Demsash Hailu.
"It was a terrorist action," he said.
The explosion killed or injured people in front of the hotel and on the street but did not damage the hotel itself, he said.
52 Somali refugees die after they are abandoned
SAN'A, Yemen -- Somali refugees abandoned by smugglers in the dangerous waters of the Gulf of Aden drifted for 18 days, and at least 52 died before the group was rescued off the Yemeni coast, the U.N. said yesterday. Seventy-one people survived the journey.
The boat broke down within hours of leaving Somalia on Sept. 3, bound for Yemen and carrying 124 Somalis, the U.N. refugee agency said. The crew abandoned the boat for another craft and never returned for the refugees.
Eventually, the boat drifted close enough to southern Yemen that three passengers tried to swim ashore. Two managed to alert rescuers; the third never made it.
The Yemeni coast guard rescued 71 refugees on Sept. 21, the UNHCR statement said.
Kidnappers of tourists lead soldiers on chase in Sudan
KHARTOUM, Sudan -- Eight kidnappers of a group of European tourists and their Egyptian guides led soldiers on a high-speed desert chase yesterday, ending in a firefight that left all but two of the gunmen dead, Sudan's military spokesman said.
The two surviving kidnappers told Sudanese soldiers that the tourists were being held by 35 more gunmen in Chad, said the spokesman, Sawarmy Khaled.
Foreign involvement hinted at in fatal bombing in Syria
DAMASCUS, Syria -- Syria hinted yesterday at foreign involvement in a deadly weekend car bombing, with its state-run media saying that the objective was to undermine Damascus' efforts to emerge from years of international isolation.
Saturday's 440-pound car bomb near a Syrian security complex on the southern outskirts of the capital killed 17 people.
It was the biggest -- and deadliest -- in the tightly controlled country since the 1980s when authorities fought an uprising by Muslim militants.
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