MOGADISHU, Somalia — It seems that there is a new breed of pirate out there, inland pirates, and their new quarry is trucks, not ships, carrying food.
On Monday, the United Nations World Food Program said that a pirate gang had ventured dozens of miles from shore and was holding three large trucks and their drivers who had just dropped off life-saving rations.
“It’s piracy coming on land,” said Peter Smerdon, a program spokesman. “It is the first incident of its kind, and obviously we hope it’s not to be repeated.”
The trucks were seized last week in Puntland, a semi-autonomous region of Somalia that is a notorious pirate haven. According to Mr. Smerdon, the pirates were holding the trucks and their drivers hostage in Eyl, a little coastal town where several hijacked ships had been kept in recent years.
Pirates have been a growing problem off Somalia’s coast for the past two years, hijacking dozens of ships and collecting tens of millions of dollars in ransom payments. Mr. Smerdon said the pirates, aided by the “local community,” attacked the food trucks after they dropped off emergency rations in central Somalia, and Somali officials said the pirates wanted jailed colleagues released in exchange for the trucks and the drivers.
Community members are holding five other trucks that were part of the same aid convoy. It is not clear what they want.Somalia’s aid operation, one of the biggest in the world, seems to be constantly running into new obstacles. In January, the World Food Program pulled out of several areas of the southern part of the country, saying that its Somali staff was being threatened by Al Shabab, an Islamist insurgent group known for chopping off hands and detonating suicide bombs.In the past two weeks, another militant group, Hizbul Islam, has turned back trucks carrying food aid, imperiling a lifeline to hundreds of thousands of people. United Nations officials have also complained about strict rules the American government recently put on food aid in an effort to ensure no food or money is diverted to Al Shabab.
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