Somalia rescues eight Indians held hostage by pirates

Somalia’s military has rescued eight Indian crew members who had been held hostage by pirates, an official said on Wednesday.

The sailors of a ship hijacked last week were rescued after regional forces surrounded their pirate captors in a small village outside Hobyo town, Abdullahi Ahmed Ali, the town’s mayor, told The Associated Press.

Four pirates were arrested during the operation, he said.

All the Indian crew members have now been rescued as two had been freed in the ship on Sunday, the mayor said. Ten crew members were taken captive, not 11 as initially announced by officials, he said.

Pirates made the captive crew members walk long distances in the bush for days to avoid troops that were chasing them.

“They are exhausted and hungry because of that long ordeal,” the mayor said.

In recent weeks there has been a resurgence of piracy off Somalia’s coast after five years of inactivity.

The piracy was once a serious threat to the global shipping industry but lessened in recent years after an international

Kurdish rebels on Wednesday claimed an attack at a police station in the mainly Kurdish city of Diyarbakir which authorities said was carried out with a ton of explosives planted inside a tunnel.

The blast occurred on Tuesday at a workshop inside the police complex as an armoured vehicle was being repaired. A police officer and two civilian employees were killed.

The Firat News agency, which is close to the rebels, said the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) claimed responsibility for the attack, which came as Turkey is heading toward a referendum on Sunday on whether to boost the president’s powers.

At least five people were detained in connection with the kir governor’s office.

Interior minister Suleyman Soylu had announced after the explosion that it appeared to be accidental.” On Wednesday, however, he told Haber Turk television that investigators had concluded that it was an attack by assailants who had dug a tunnel and placed explosives beneath the vehicle repair facility.

The Diyarbakir governor’s office said around a ton of explosives, including RDX, ammonium nitrate and TNT, were used. The tunnel was some 30 metres long, it said.

The PKK has waged a threedecade old insurgency in southeast Turkey which has killed tens of thousands of people.

The conflict reignited in 2015 after the collapse of a short lived