Daily News Channel
Incident details : "Armed pirates chased, boarded and hijacked a fishing trawler underway" SE of Mogadishu, Somalia … "Several persons armed with machine guns, rocket-propelled grenade launchers and machetes attempting to climb onboard with use of rope" Lagos anchorage, Nigeria
Pirates near Somalia’s coastline attacked a cargo ship Wednesday with a crew of at least 20 U.S. nationals, according to the company that owns the vessel.
A British-owned cargo ship on Monday became the latest vessel to be seized by Somali pirates in the Gulf of Aden. The 32,000-tonne Malaspina Castle was taken early on Monday and was believed to be heading towards Somalia’s pirate-infested coast, the European Union’s Horn of Africa maritime security center said. “Few details are known at this stage, but the mixed-nationality crew is believed to be safe,” a statement on the London-based organization’s Web site said
Pirates have struck again, this time capturing a Greek cargo ship in waters off Somalia on Thursday evening, a Greek government spokesman said.
Somali President Sharif Sheikh Hassan said Saturday he will give in to a rebel demand that he impose Islamic law, or sharia, in an effort to halt fighting between Somali forces and Islamic insurgents. However, Hassan told a news conference he won’t agree to a strict interpretation of the law, which forbids girls from attending school, requires veils for women and beards for men, and bans music and television. The president, speaking at his palace in the capital, Mogadishu, said local elders and religious leaders, acting as liaisons with the militants, brought him a message saying the rebels wanted a truce in the two-year-old fighting.
FBI Director Robert Mueller pointed Monday to recent terror attacks in Mumbai, India, and Somalia to highlight the FBI’s concern that small groups or individuals could carry out such attacks on U.S. soil. In a speech to the Council on Foreign Relations, Mueller worried that the dramatic terror attack on hotels and other facilities in Mumbai potentially could be replicated in the United States
Islamist fighters in Somalia have made significant gains in the country, according to the latest statement purportedly from al Qaeda’s second-in-command, Ayman al-Zawahiri. The 25-minute audio recording, titled “From Kabul to Mogadishu,” focuses primarily on the “important developments” in Somalia, which al-Zawahiri called “a step on the path of victory of Islam.” CNN cannot authenticate the message, which was released on Sunday and was interspersed with television news reports and statements from various al Qaeda-linked commanders
The African Union responded angrily and defiantly to the killing of at least 11 Burundian soldiers in an apparent suicide bomb attack Sunday in Somalia’s capital, Mogadishu. The 11 soldiers were on a peacekeeping mission for the African Union.
A controversial comment by the top U.N. envoy to Somalia "motivates" those who have carried out recent fatal attacks against journalists in the war-torn country, the head of the National Union of Somali Journalists (NUSOJ) said Wednesday