Somali pirates were Monday preparing to release a German ship held off the Somali coast for four months after receiving a multi-million-dollar ransom, a member of the gang said, according to dpa. The Hansa Stavanger was seized on April 4 around 400 nautical miles off the Somali coast, between Kenya and the Seychelles. "We have received 2.7 million dollars from the owners," Muse Guled told the German Press Agency by phone from the coastal town of Harardhere. Muse said the pirates would free the vessel soon, but did not give an exact timescale. The ship had been due to be released late last week after the 2.7-million-dollar payment was agreed but the pirates attempted to shift their demands at the last minute. However, Muse said that the group finally agreed to accept the original figure. The 20,000-tonne ship is owned by Hamburg shipping company Leonhardt & Blumberg and has five German crew members onboard. The developments in the Hansa Stavanger case came hours after the European Union's naval force in the region said that pirates had released Malaysian tugboat Masindra Seven and its crew of 11 Indonesians. The Masindra was captured in December at the tail-end of a spike in pirate activity in the busy shipping lane off the Somali coast, which links Asia with Europe. Pirate attacks tailed off for a few months in early 2009, but have since picked up again. According to the International Maritime Bureau's Piracy Reporting Centre, there were 240 pirate attacks around the world in the first six months of 2009, almost double the same period last year. Somalis was responsible for the majority of the attacks. Some 42 vessels were seized in the Gulf of Aden and the Indian Ocean near Somalia last year. Already this year Somali pirates have seized 31 ships. Monsoon season has prevented the pirates, who operate small skiffs, from carrying out many attacks in recent weeks. However, the US Navy has cautioned that it will be business as usual in a few weeks once the weather improves. The increase in hijackings comes despite the presence of dozens of international warships in the pirate-infested waters.
