MANILA, Philippines?Seven Filipino seafarers have been freed in Somalia after negotiations with the pirates who were holding them, Executive Secretary Eduardo Ermita announced Tuesday even as he assured the public that the rest of about 96 hostaged Filipinos were safe.

?No harm has befallen our compatriots,? Ermita told reporters.

He said the possibility of imposing a ban on the deployment of Filipino seafarers in ships passing through the Horn of Africa was still under study.

Ermita explained that it was not easy to order a ban because ?for one thing, we do not know who among our OFWs [would be] riding commercial vessels passing through Somalia.?

?We don?t know what will be their destinations. All we can do is give out an advisory to be sure that whenever they travel from one place to another, they will not take a merchant or a commercial vessel passing through Somalian waters. That?s the most we can do for the moment,? he said.

The number of Filipinos held captive by Somali pirates was brought to 96 as another Greek vessel with 19 crew members, 17 of them Filipinos, was hijacked off Somalia last Sunday.

?[Pirates] are squeezing money out of Filipino seafarers ... because they [seamen] have the reputation of very good seafarers for merchant vessels. They are very good, well taken care of by their employers, so they are easy targets of pirates,? said Ermita.

But Ermita gave a slightly higher figure, 106, for the number of Filipino seamen captured by pirates since July. He gave no details.

He said he had been informed by Foreign Undersecretary Esteban Conejos that the negotiations by the employers of the hostaged Filipino seafarers were moving forward.

Ermita said the Philippines could possibly bring the issue of the hijacking of merchant vessels in the area around the Horn of Africa to the United Nations, ?considering that many of our Filipino compatriots are the ones being subjected to this hostage-taking by Somali pirates.? Michael Lim Ubac