Kuala Lumpur - A Greek-owned bulk carrier cargo ship was attacked Thursday by armed pirates off the eastern coast of Somalia, an anti-piracy watchdog said.

The ship had been travelling to Kenya when a group of pirates launched an attack about 200 nautical miles, or 370 kilometres, off the coast of Somalia's capital, Mogadishu, Noel Choong of the International Maritime Bureau said in Malaysia.

The Greek ship was expected Friday at Mombasa to discharge its cargo, news reports said. All 25 crew members were said to be safe, Choong said

He said the latest incident showed Somali pirates have expanded their area of attack from the country's northern coast in the Gulf of Aden to Somalia's eastern coast.

Mogadishu  - Almost 9,500 Somali civilians have been killed since early 2007 as the government battles a bloody insurgency, a human rights body said Tuesday.

Ali Sheikh Yasen, deputy chairman of the Mogadishu-based Elman Peace and Human Rights Organization, told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa that a total of 9,474 civilians had died in the insurgency, with 838 deaths coming since June.

Mogadishu - An African Union peacekeeper died and two others were injured Monday after a roadside bomb exploded in South Mogadishu, a spokesman for the African Union Mission in Somalia (AMISOM) said.

"An AMISOM convoy of Ugandan soldiers come under attack - one of our soldiers died and two were wounded," Major Barieye Bahuko told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa.

However, local resident Ahmed Mohamed told dpa that he saw the bodies of five peacekeepers on the ground.

Nairobi - Somali pirates on Wednesday hijacked a South Korean cargo ship with 21 crew onboard but failed in an attempt to seize a Greek vessel in the Gulf of Aden, a maritime official said.

"Pirates attacked a fully loaded South Korean bulk carrier en route from Europe to Asia and successfully hijacked her," Noel Choong of the International Maritime Bureau's Piracy Reporting Centre told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa.

Piracy has surged this year in the Gulf of Aden, part of an important shipping route from the Indian Ocean to the Mediterranean Sea via the Suez Canal.

Mogadishu  - Outspoken Somali lawmaker Mohamed Osman Maye was shot dead outside a mosque near the seat of Somalia's parliament in the town of Baidoa by unidentified armed men late Tuesday, witnesses said.

"Maye was shot dead by several bullets to the head as he was coming out of the mosque" witness Dahir Ali Muse told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa. "He died on the spot in front of the mosque."

Maye was an associate of President Abdullahi Yusuf. He was also a member of an association of Somali minority clans in Banadir and lower Shabelle region.

Sana'a, Yemen - More than 1,700 African refuge-seekers have arrived on Yemeni coasts as a new season of people-smuggling gathers steam across the Gulf of Aden, the UN refugee agency reported Tuesday.

"With the onset of calmer weather, smuggling from the Horn of Africa to the Gulf of Aden resumed in August, when 59 boats brought more than 1,700 desperate people to the coasts of Yemen," the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHRC) said in a statement.

It said the figure was three times higher than the number of arrivals in August 2007, when 633 people landed in 10 boats.

The new wave of smuggling resumed earlier this year, as trafficking regularly resumes in September after summer storms subside, the UN agency said.