More countries must help Kenya to prosecute Somali pirates, a top United Nations official said.

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.

Somalia's prime minister said he could go after pirates if other nations gave him the resources he needed.

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.

The American crew of a hijacked US-flagged ship retook control of the vessel from Somali pirates today, but the captain was still being held hostage in a lifeboat, according three people on board.

Five men have been arrested in Somalia in connection with the kidnapping of a British journalist and Spanish photographer last week.

Two journalists, one British, have been kidnapped while trying to report on piracy in Somalia, police said today.

Somali pirates preying on international shipping are also damaging their homeland’s battered economy, worsening the instability that opened the door to piracy and inroads by Islamist extremists, the UN chief warned.

At least 19 people died in a series of suicide bombings across northern Somalia which included a UN compound today.

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.

The crew of a tug boat that was seized by pirates off Somalia are unharmed and have access to both food and water, the Danish owner said today.

AN IRISH marine engineer is among the multinational crew of a Danish-owned tug boat that has been captured by pirates off the coast of Somalia.

A French journalist abducted by Somali gunmen was released today, eight days after he was seized in the northern part of the country, police said.

A male aid worker from the North is one of two people missing and feared kidnapped in Somalia.

Elders of the dominant clan in the Somali capital Mogadishu remain committed to a truce negotiated with Ethiopian military officials backing the government.

PIRATES hijacked a cargo ship delivering UN food aid to northeastern Somalia yesterday — at least the third time since 2005 that a vessel contracted to the United Nations has been hijacked off the country’s dangerous coast.

Pirates hijacked a cargo ship delivering UN food aid to north-eastern Somalia today, officials said.

Heavy fighting erupted in northern Somalia today as Islamic forces clashed with militia backed by Ethiopian troops, an Islamic official said.

The UN today said that international staff had been temporarily pulled out of parts of Somalia controlled by Islamic radicals after receiving “direct written threats”.

The number of Somalis killed by deadly tidal waves that battered the country’s shores has doubled to more than 200.

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.