PTI

Nairobi, May 24: Somali pirates have released a ship, with at least 10 Indians onboard, which was hijacked off the Somalian coast a week ago, officials said.

The owners of the ship, the MV Victoria, told the East Africa Seafarers Assistance Programme that it was released on Friday and is now traveling with a handful of Somali soldiers on board to ensure its safe passage, programme coordinator Andrew Mwangura said.

Marwan Shipping and Trading Company, based in Sharjah, United Arab Emirates, owns the Jordanian-flagged MV Victoria, Mwangura said. He said he did not know under what terms the pirates released the ship.

The ship is traveling to Mogadishu its destination before it was hijacked on May 17 to offload its cargo, Mwangura said.

There have been conflicting reports about whether it was carrying humanitarian aid or commercial cargo.

The ship has about a dozen crewmembers from Bangladesh, India, Pakistan and Tanzania.

This month's hijacking was the second time the Victoria was attacked. Pirates tried to board it last year outside Merka, a port in southern Somalia, but the ship escaped.

Piracy is rampant along the 1,880-3,000-kilometer Somali coast, which is the longest in Africa and is near key shipping routes connecting the Red Sea with the Indian Ocean. There have been more than a dozen pirate attacks this year alone.

Somalia has been in a state of anarchy since warlords overthrew long-serving dictator Mohamed Siad Barre in 1991.

The country does not have a coast guard or navy.

Yesterday, South Africa's UN Ambassador Dumisani Kumalo said that UN experts monitoring a 1992 arms embargo in Somalia were investigating the links between piracy and arms trafficking.

The experts were also investigating allegations that pirates received ''active support'' from government officials in charge of the ports, Kumalo said in a report to the UN Security Council.

Last month, the US and France introduced a UN resolution that would allow countries to chase and arrest pirates off Somalia's coast. The resolution came in response to the increase in attacks this year and last year compared with 2006 when they had dwindled.

The clashes in Mogadishu between insurgents and Somali soldiers, who were backed by Ethiopian troops, lasted about five hours. The fighting erupted while the soldiers were conducting house-to-house searches for weapons.