Turkish ship with Indian crew freed

23 July 2013 Last updated at 04:37 GMT By Subir Bhaumik Calcutta It is not clear whether the pirates made a demand for ransom Pirates have released a Turkish cargo ship with a crew of 24 Indians which they hijacked near Port Gentil off the coast of Gabon in West Africa last week.

The Indian crew of MT Cotton is safe and many of them have called home after their release, family members say.

It is unclear if a ransom demand was made by the pirates.

The region has so far been considered safe with no previous hijacking or piracy incident recorded there.

"They are all safe but they have been robbed by the pirates," said Preeti Wahi, wife of MT Cotton's captain, Sishir Wahi.

She said her husband told her the ship was released on Monday. The crew will reach India next week.

Officials at Geden Lines, the Turkish company owning the ship, say the captain has been asked to move the ship at "fullest possible speed" from its present location at the Gulf of Guinea to a "safe port" in West Africa.

"The crew on board the ship are safe and nobody is in need of urgent medical attention. But they have been looted of everything," said Gautam Chatterjee, India's director-general of shipping.

Mr Chatterjee said the pirates had also taken away nearly a third of the ship's cargo.

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Spanish hostages freed from Somalia

18 July 2013 Last updated at 16:54 GMT Montserrat Serra (L) and Blanca Thiebaut (R) were driven by their abductors to Somalia Two Spanish aid workers kidnapped in Kenya nearly two years ago and held over the border in Somali have been freed, their employer has said.

Medecins Sans Frontieres said the two women were both "safe and healthy and keen to join their loved ones".

Montserrat Serra and Blanca Thiebaut were abducted from Dadaab refugee camp in October 2011.

Following their abduction and those of other hostages, Kenya sent troops into Somalia to battle Islamist militants.

In a statement, MSF said it was with great relief that the organisation was able to confirm the women's release.

"MSF wishes to thank everyone involved in securing their safe release," it said, without giving further details about how they were freed.

"As we are still working on the return of the two girls to their homes, we ask you to respect their need for privacy at this time."

The women were kidnapped on 13 October 2011 by gunmen who opened fire on their vehicle inside the Dadaab refugee camp complex, shooting and wounding their Kenyan driver.

Dadaab, said to be the world's largest refugee camp, houses some 500,000 people who have fled years of conflict and drought across the border in Somalia.

Both women were working as logisticians for MSF in Dadaab.

Ms Serra, a qualified teacher from Girona in Spain, had been working in Kenya for two months before she was kidnapped. She had previously worked on aid projects in Latin America and Yemen.

An agricultural engineer by training, Ms Thiebaut from Madrid had not long finished a degree at the London School of Economics at the time of her abduction.

Kenya accused the al-Qaeda-aligned group al-Shabab of being behind their kidnapping and a spate of others in 2011, thus threatening the country's security.

It sent troops into Somalia to pursue them and later seized most of the border region from al-Shabab.

Its soldiers in Somalia have now been absorbed into the African Union (AU) force which is helping the weak Somali government.

Although the AU and Somali government have driven al-Shabab from most major cities, its fighters still control smaller towns and rural areas in central and southern Somalia and they sometimes launch attacks in government-controlled territory.

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