Hmmm, USN surrounds the area. British send ships. NATO sends ships. Somali officials authorize the use of force from the intl community against the pirates, Russia sends ships, and-wha? All of a sudden the ship is freed? Gee, how did that happen? No, this is not the Ukrainian ship w Russian tanks on board, or the Spanish ship. It’s the Iranian ship where the pirates who were briefly exposed to “something” suddenly became sick, and 50 reportedly died. Now the ship is on the loose.

On August 21, the pirates seized the Iranian bulk carrier, carrying 42,500 tons of minerals and industrial products.

“The ship Dianat was released on Friday morning after even weeks of negotiations with Somali pirates and all 29 members of the crew are safe,” Said public relations office of the Islamic Republic of Iran Shipping Line (IRISL).

The ship is sailing towards international waters, IRISL added.

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BAIDOA, Somalia (Reuters) - An unidentified aircraft bombed an Islamist rebel stronghold in central Somalia on Thursday, witnesses said, but it was not immediately clear if there were any casualties.

U.S. forces have launched several airstrikes inside Somalia in recent months against al Shabaab insurgents who have been fighting Somalia’s weak Western-backed interim government and its Ethiopian military allies since the start of last year.

“A plane bombarded the outskirts of our village,” said Hassan Maalim in Goobgudud, 18 miles southwest of Baidoa. “The whole earth shook but we don’t know the damage or death it caused. It was flying over us since morning.”

The identity of the aircraft was unclear.

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Yes, this is the same ship Flopping Aces reported on a while back. There is no more news about it other than this report which is yet another confirmation of the strange pirate deaths. The msm and govts are not talking about this at all. It’s a full on blackout.

A tense standoff has developed in waters off Somalia over an Iranian merchant ship laden with a mysterious cargo that was hijacked by pirates. Somali pirates suffered skin burns, lost hair and fell gravely ill “within days” of boarding the MV Iran Deyanat. Some of them died.

Andrew Mwangura, the director of the East African Seafarers’ Assistance Programme, told the Sunday Times: “We don’t know exactly how many, but the information that I am getting is that some of them had died. There is something very wrong about that ship.” The vessel’s declared cargo consists of “minerals” and “industrial products”. But officials involved in negotiations over the ship are convinced that it was sailing for Eritrea to deliver small arms and chemical weapons to Somalia’s Islamist rebels.

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MOGADISHU, Somalia (AP) — There have been four failed pirate attacks in the last 24 hours off the lawless Somali coast despite the presence of six American warships guarding a hijacked ship full of weapons, a U.S. navy spokeswoman said Saturday.

Navy Commander Jane Campbell, from the 5th Fleet in Bahrain, says three attacks were averted because crew members escaped at high speed.

Another attack was foiled because the pirates were badly prepared: The ladder they had brought to climb onto the ship was too short.

The Navy says that three of the attacks were in the heavily patrolled corridor within the Gulf of Aden. The location of another was not precisely known but was somewhere off the Somali coast.

Last week’s attack on a Ukrainian ship laden with 33 Soviet-designed tanks and weapons has focused international attention on piracy in Somalia. American officials have expressed fears the weapons onboard the MV Faina could fall into the hands of Somalia’s al-Qaida-linked Islamic insurgency.

Eight European countries have offered to help form an anti-piracy force. On Friday, Russia called for greater efforts to protect the Gulf of Aden waters, one of the world’s most important shipping lanes. There have been nearly 70 pirate attacks this year already and some 26 ships successfully hijacked

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