Wednesday, July 09, 2008
The Lehmann GmbH shipping company said the MV Lehmann Timber was sailing for a safe port a day after the ship was freed. The captain and 15 crew members will be brought ashore and given medical checkups and allowed to rest, it said in a statement.
"The ship and its 15 crew members were released on Tuesday afternoon after pirates received a ransom of $750,000," Ali Farah Warfa, the acting district commissioner of the Somali coastal town of Eyl, told The Associated Press by telephone.
He said the ransom came in by another ship and was paid to 18 pirates, most armed with AK-47s and heavy machine guns, in Eyl, 2300 miles north of
The ship's owners said they are "delighted that the incident has been resolved and that the crew are safe and well."
Lehmann Timber was one of two ships hijacked on May 30 off the Horn of Africa. Piracy is rampant along the 1,880-mile Somali coast.