Somalia

Somali ceasefire set to take effect November 5

SomaliNairobi/Djibouti - A ceasefire agreement between the Somali government and parts of the Islamist opposition is set to take effect on November 5, after the warring parties reached an agreement Sunday evening in Djibouti.

Somali ex-foreign minister calls for imprisonment of pirates

Munich - A former foreign minister of Somalia called in an interview published Saturday for foreign navies to crack down on piracy and lock the pirates up.

"They should set up internment camps under extra-territorial jurisdiction," said Abdullahi Sheikh Ismael in an interview with the German news magazine website Focus Online.

He said the camps could be on Somali soil, but the judges would not have to be from Somalia. Navies which caught pirates could decide themselves where to try them.

Ismael, who was speaking in Djibouti, belongs to the legislature of Somalia's interim government and previously held the foreign portfolio.

NATO ships to escort food convoys for Somalia

NATO ships have arrived off the Somali coast to begin escorting relief convoys for Somalia, which has lost critical food supplies from the World Food Programme (WFP) to pirates in the past year, the UN said Wednesday.

WFP, backed by the Somali government, requested military vessel escorts to thwart future hijacking of cargo ships carrying food and medicine supplies for Somalia.

The UN Security Council earlier this month authorized use of force by UN members to fight the wave of piracy and armed robbery endangering cargo ships as well as luxury cruise ships plying the waters off Somalia.

Somalian pirates seize Indian dhow with 13-member crew

SomaliaKuala Lumpur, Oct 21 : Armed pirates in speedboats have hijacked an Indian dhow with 13 crew members off the northern coast of Somalia, a maritime official has said.

The cargo-laden vessel was en route to Somalia when it was seized over the weekend, said Noel Choong, head of the International Maritime Bureau’s piracy reporting centre in Kuala Lumpur, on Saturday.

UN condemns rising attacks on aid workers in Somalia, Afghanistan

UN condemns rising attacks on aid workers in Somalia, Afghanistan New York - UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon condemned Monday the killing of two aid workers in Somalia and another in Afghanistan in the past three days, saying that he was alarmed by the targeting of people trying to help the poor.

Unknown gunmen shot and killed the head of UNICEF's water and sanitation programme in Somalia on Sunday, three days after an aid worker of the World Food Programme was killed in the central Somali town of Merka.

More than 40 Somalis rescued off Malta

SomaliaValletta, Malta - A group of 43 Somali would-be immigrants was rescued Monday off Malta, authorities on the Mediterranean island said.

According to the Maltese army, the migrants used a satellite phone to alert a rescue centre in Italy that their dinghy was adrift and that they had lost their outboard engine. The incident took place 88 nautical miles south of the Mediterranean island.

The migrants - 30 men and 13 women - were later picked up by a patrol boat and are in good health, officials said.

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