MOGADISHU — Somali pirates were holding two foreigners in the south of the country Sunday, local sources said, amid reports that a third person had been shot while resisting his captors.
Two hostages, a man and a woman, were being held in an inaccessible part of Barawe, southern Somalia after having been seized from their yacht a few days earlier, said the sources.
The pirates opened fire on a third man who early Sunday had resisted efforts to take him ashore, but it was not clear whether he had survived.
Several helicopters had trailed the pirates as they reached land, said Somali sources. The EU's Atalante anti-piracy naval task force would make no comment on the reports.
"Military helicopters tried to intercept the pirates before they reached the coast this morning with the three hostages kidnapped near the Seychelles a few days ago," Hassan Abukar, a pirate in the Somali port of Harardere, told AFP.
The pirates had apparently fired on one of the hostages, "a black man who refused to go ashore, and they left him there, but I can't say if he is dead," he added.
"Fishermen saw several helicopters chasing the pirates who were holding three foreign hostages, including a black man," Suleman Moalim Ahmed, an elder living in Barawe told AFP.
The pirates managed to reach land with a man and a woman, both white, leaving the third hostage as the helicopters approached, according to the accounts he had heard.
South Africa's foreign ministry meanwhile denied reports that one of its citizens had been killed by the pirates.
A statement from the ministry said that "the deceased person in a Somali hospital who is alleged to have been killed by the Somali pirates... is not a South African citizen."
They were still however trying to ascertain the identity of the two other hostages, the statement added.
The Islamist militants of the Shebab movement, which controls Baraze, refused to comment.
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