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ANKARA ? Somali pirates on Monday released a Turkish cargo ship and its 23-men crew which had been held for nearly three months after receiving a ransom payment, a lawyer for the ship's owner said.
"The ship is now being accompanied by a frigate... to a secure zone. Afterwards it will travel to the Jordanian port of Aqaba on the Red Sea, which was its original destination," said Nilgun Yamaner on NTV television.
"From there we will repatriate the crew by plane to Turkey," she said.
The lawyer refused to say how much ransom was paid to free the ship.
In early September the pirates demanded a ransom of $20 million (?14 million).
The Horizon-1, owned by the Istanbul-based Horizon Maritime and Trade, was sailing from Saudi Arabia to Jordan with a cargo of 33,000 cubic meters of sulphide when it was seized by pirates on July 8.
Pirates directed the ship to the port of Eyl in northern Somalia's breakaway Puntland region, where it was anchored.
The world's naval powers have deployed dozens of warships to the lawless waters off Somalia over the past year to curb attacks by pirates threatening one of the world's busiest maritime trade routes.
More than 130 merchant ships were attacked last year, a rise of more than 200 percent on 2007, according to the Kuala Lumpur-based International Maritime Bureau's Piracy Reporting Centre.
