Two security contractors - a Briton and Kenyan - and three former hostages released by Somali pirates are facing prison over an alleged plot to swap the captives for 23 suspected pirates on a desolate Somali airstrip, officials said today.

AN American ship’s captain was freed unharmed yesterday in a US Navy operation that killed three of the four Somali pirates who had been holding him for days in a lifeboat off the coast of Africa, a senior US intelligence official said.

A heavily armed US destroyer was stationed off the coast of Somalia today, making sure that pirates there don’t remove tanks, ammunition and other heavy weapons from a hijacked Ukrainian cargo ship.

HUNDREDS of Somalis died and entire villages and towns disappeared when tidal waves hit the East African nation’s coastline after travelling 2,800 miles across the Indian Ocean.