MOGADISHU, Sept 24 (Reuters) - Somali pirates boarded a Panama-flagged ship heading for Mogadishu on Thursday and killed its Syrian captain after he refused to turn the vessel away from the port, officials said. "The pirates killed the captain after he refused to turn the ship. Usually, we send police when commercial ships draw near the port but the pirates were already on board and opened fire injuring one policeman," Abdiasis Hassan, minister for ports, told Reuters. African Union peacekeeping troops and Somali police rescued the ship, officials said. "The captain was a Syrian and his body is at the port now. The ship's name is Barwaqo," Ahmed Abdi, a port official, told Reuters. (Reporting by Abdi sheikh and Mohamed Ahmed; Editing by Helen Nyambura-Mwaura and Andrew Dobbie)
Government soldiers patrol a street south of Somalia's capital Mogadishu September 24, 2009. Somali government forces are battling a deadly Islamist insurgency. Somalia will become "the new Afghanistan" unless Western nations ...
