Somali police arrest four ship hijackers -UN

NAIROBI, Feb 28 (Reuters) Somali authorities have arrested four men they said were members of a gang of pirates who hijacked a ship chartered to carry UN food aid and are still holding the crew, a UN agency said.

Gunmen used speedboats to intercept the Kenyan-owned MV Rozen on Sunday, storming the freighter and taking hostage its six Kenyan and six Sri Lankan crew, in the first hijacking reported since a December war ousted Islamists from Somalia.

The ship, chartered by the UN's World Food Programme (WFP), has been anchored off Bargal, a port in Somalia's semi-autonomous Puntland region, since the hijacking.

The WFP yesterday said four men were arrested when they went ashore to buy supplies, leaving four other gang members aboard the ship.

''The arrest is welcome news, but the safe release of the crew and the vessel remains our chief concern,'' WFP Somalia's country director Peter Goossens said in a statement.

''We very much hope this ordeal will finish soon. We are appealing for the safe return of the crew and the vessel as soon as possible, and for people to respect the need for humanitarian delivery corridors.'' The WFP said there were reports the vessel was surrounded by five police boats and was sailing southwards.

A maritime group said authorities were negotiating with the hijackers, who had apparently attacked the wrong ship.

''Negotiations are going well,'' Andrew Mwangura, director of the Mombasa Seafarers Assistance Programme, told Reuters.

''They might be released any time ... The gunmen might be released by the authorities and given free passage home as they are the same clan as the Puntland authorities.'' The ship, chartered from Mombasa-based Motaku Shipping Agency, was seized after unloading 1,800 tonnes of food aid at two northern Somali ports. It was the third hijacking in two years of a ship hired to carry relief supplies by the WFP.

Somali pirates seized three Motaku vessels in 2005, holding one and its crew hostage for nearly 100 days. Two of those ships had been carrying WFP cargoes.

The WFP said the Rozen was attacked last year off Marka, a port south of Mogadishu, but dodged the pirates that time.

Pirates, who had made Somalia's coastline one of the most dangerous in the world, vanished from Somali waters while a battle for control of the nation raged on land.

Experts say a band of pirates based in Harardheere port have regrouped and are thought to have been behind Sunday's attack and two unsuccessful hijacking attempts earlier this year.

The Islamists, who ruled much of southern Somalia for six months and applied strict sharia law before being ousted by government and Ethiopian troops, had cracked down on piracy, in part to protect their weapons shipments.

Reuters PDM VP1010