November 05, 2007	Monday	Shawwal 23, 1428

SEOUL, Nov 4: A group of 24 Asian sailors held hostage by pirates in Somalia for more than five months was freed on Sunday off the Somali coast and has left for Yemen, the South Korean foreign ministry said.

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 10:00 pm Seoul time (1300 GMT) 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 his federation had raised some $300,000 and Christian groups separately donated hundreds of thousand of dollars to help meet the pirates’ Oct 6 demand for some $1.1 million in ransom.

The US Navy confirmed the release after pirates left the two vessels off the Somali coast.

“Two (US Navy) boarding teams went onboard the Mavuno vessels to offer the crew assistance and give them food and water,” said Commander Lydia Robertson US Naval Forces Central Command in Bahrain.

“There are still three pirated vessels off the Somali coast and we continue to encourage the pirates to leave the vessels,” Robertson told AFP by phone.

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 some 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.—AFP